“Zero Hour”: A Crisis In Recapping, Part 2

Folks, you’ve heard about it whispered in the corners of DC fandom. You’ve been confused at the odd reference to it in those “modern comics” you devour week after week. What in the darned heck is “Zero Hour”? Why is it called that? Why is it numbered backward? Who is Extant and should I really care? Well, wonder no more, gentle readers. Not only will I be recapping all five issues of the titled event comic, but I will also be reviewing the whole damned thing. Yes, every official lead-up and questionably connected tie-in that DC Comics has chosen to fill up their hefty omnibus tome that haunts the corner of my writing desk. Come with me on this journey through time and more time and some space as we dive into the mess that is “Zero Hour: A Crisis In Time”.

Cover by Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway and Drew Moore

Written by Dan Jurgens and others
Illustrated by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway and others
Colored by Gregory Wright and others
Lettered by Gaspar Saladino and others

The universe is being destroyed by an all-consuming force! Like Barry Allen before him, Wally West Flash tries to stop the crisis but vanishes in the process. In addition, anomalies, such as Barbara Gordon appearing as Batgirl–despite the fact that Joker paralyzed her years before–begin popping up all over the world!

A reminder, first of all, that I’m scoring these comics based on their relationship to the core event, with my patented Zero Hour Score (Series relevance + individual merit)!
Last week we covered the prelude and a few scant issues with slight allusions to our main event. This time around, we’ve got some more super fun and varied tie-ins, and the very first issue of the countdown to the end, “Zero Hour” itself! Let’s dig right in.

Detective Comics #678
Written by Chuck Dixon
Illustrated by Graham Nolan and Bob McLeod
Colored by Adrienne Roy
Lettered by John Costanza

This is that good-good stuff, folks. We’re looking at peak-nineties “Batman” comics with Chuck Dixon at the height of his powers, and Graham Nolan pushed even further with the slick inks of Bob McLeod of “New Mutants” fame. Like what we’ve seen before, this isn’t a strictly pillar-setting tie-in but the creative time has a ball with some alternate reality/timey-wimey nonsense here that it seems inexplicably connected to “Zero Hour” at least in the setting. The pitch here is that Batman is somehow transported to a time where his parents survived the Joe Chill encounter, but his child self did not. Dixon nails a genuinely disturbed Batman, with a staccato internal monologue that seems to be desperately rationalizing the situation he’s in, trying not to get emotionally invested. There’s a great sense of desperation as Batman never quite meets his parents but is killing himself to do so, and Dixon knows how to perfectly pace that out to extract tension from readers. Nolan’s art in this nails the tone that is set here, especially in the short fight scene present. This isn’t a precise and surgeon-like vigilante, this is Batman as a wrestler, battling and tossing criminals around with fervor and bluntness, showing his heightened emotional state well. There’s plenty of “The Dark Knight Returns” in the DNA of this comic too (in a ’90s Bat Comic? What a surprise!) but it works, with a great silhouette shot of Batman dangling a criminal from a high window. Adrienne Roy’s colors are pitch-perfect too, giving us some very moody overtones to chew on. Sometimes, Batman is bathed in blue and yellow light laying waste to criminals atop a broken car, or we see him confronting a junkie Joe Chill in a dark room lit by neon pink Gotham street lights. It’s all very stylized and very satisfying to see this level of craft on display, which is absolutely a reflection of the comic at large.

Zero Hour Score: 7.5 – Some potential allusions to things going on with “Zero Hour”, but that shouldn’t stop you from reading this great slice of how solid mid-nineties “Detective Comics” was.

Steel #8
Written by Louise Simonson
Continued below

I never realized Steel had his own ongoing series in the nineties, yet it makes total sense. I do recognize the talent here, however, with powerhouse writer Lousie Simonson on board. The rest of the creative team I’ve seen less of, but they match Simonson’s output easily. The first thing I noticed on the interiors is that Batista’s character work is a great balance of exaggerated anatomy and realistic posing. Superman and John Henry Irons AKA Steel are the first characters we see, and boy-howdy are they beefy, but they both look comfortable and relaxed, which matches their personas. Simonson also doesn’t shy away from what all us readers are secretly doing, and has just about every character in this book thirst over our main guy Steel, and it makes for a fun narrative! The overarching story here has a fun but ultimately throwaway bad guy team named First Wave attack Steel in public. All the while, a time-displaced John from the sixties is here presumably because of “Zero Hour”, and has his mind blown by seeing his future self in action and the family he’s made. It’s pretty fun and makes for some great action scenes, with some rich and silky inks to keeps things buoyant from Faber and Pepoy. The underlying narrative comes from Steel’s nephew Jemahl, who is tempted the whole battle to use some superpower-gifting drug named Tar to help out and save his foster brother Tyke. It’s a storytelling trope that leans into some unfortunate racial stereotypes that were present in the nineties, but at the very least, Jemahl chooses not to rely on drugs to save his brother. Going handles colors here superbly, with some candy-like yellows present to accentuate the fight scenes, especially when mixed with negative whites to accentuate characters.

Zero Hour Score: 6.5 – Another hazy connection to our main event, but a fun superhero tale nonetheless.

Flash #8
Written by Mark Waid
Illustrated by Carlos Pacheco, Wayne Faucher, and Jose Marzan Jr.
Colored by Gina Going
Lettered by Kevin Cunningham

Next up, we’ve got a slice from another high-profile comic run: Mark Waid’s “Flash”! This issue doesn’t have series regular/legend Mike Wieringo (R.I.P.) present, but Carlos Pacheco does a great job using a similar cartoony style. Story-wise, fan-favorite Impulse has just been introduced a few issues earlier and so Waid uses this story as a Shonen-style training arc for him. Waid here is building up a lot of speedster powers that will be rinsed heavily in later stories, but here they feel genuine and exciting. When Wally is witness to Impulse vibrating through a wall, his disbelief and sense of wonder are palpable. There’s still a whole lot to unpack in this issue plotwise too, Waid spared no panel! Some dude named Argus shows up to foreshadow a Kobra-arc, the family dynamic between Wally, Iris, and Linda feels like the earnest prototype for the modern TV show and Waid plants seeds for a character that has been shaping Wally’s life since the early days. This really feels like part of a much longer narrative, so it’s high praise that this reads so well out of context too. Pacheco plays really well with showing Super Speed, using an overlaid multiple-panel effect to show normal time passing at a snail’s pace, whilst the underlying panel shows Wally in mid-sprint, oozing with speed-lines. His facial work is also cartoony and expressive, making Wally feel stern yet still full of youth, whilst Bart actually looks like a child, filled with innocence and wanderlust. Going’s colors are great here, using bright primaries to highlight our superheroes and villains whilst the backgrounds have a more pastel effect, working well at conveying a depth of field outside of linework. The final kicker of this issue, however, is Wally’s abrupt jump to the 64th century, and a visit from our enigmatic golden man himself, Waverider!

Zero Hour Score: 7.0 – Whilst the bulk of this issue is part of Waid’s larger run, the finale leads directly into “Zero Hour”!

Zero Hour #4
Written by Dan Jurgens
Continued below

This is it folks, the debut of the hottest comic event of 1994! Make no mistake, this is event comics as big as they come, intricate, high stakes, and arcane as heck. The inciting incident here occurs when Extant shows up at the end of time energy blasting the Time Trapper to death with all the spit and fury of a nineties high school bully. Jurgens really knows how to deliver this guy’s dialogue so that you can feel his blood boiling through the page, with lines like “ALL YOU OMNIPOTENT TYPES DO IS BABBLE ABOUT YOUR AUTHORITY… WHILE YOU’RE GETTING YOUR BUTTS KICKED”. The scene is delivered with huge textures of energy that land somewhere between thorough George Perez-style detail and old-fashioned Kirby Krackle, and Wright’s colors sear off the page with delicious rainbows of time energy.

This scene really sets the mood for the whole issue (hell, maybe even the whole event), but the rest of the story present although by the book, is still quite fun. We’ve got all your DC Crisis event trappings here, folks. Wally West, stuck in the future, attempts to dispel Extant’s time rift with super speed but is dissolved into the speed forces aside from his costume, Metron approaches Batman and Superman and has the enlist as much of the wider DCU as they can to combat the incoming event, and Waverider acts as the pseudo-Pariah character, signaling whenever something bad is about to happen. There are great moments that are punctuated throughout with strong Perez-style page composition, channeling the dense spirit of the original “Crisis On Infinite Earths”. Seeing Jurgens’ take on Kirby’s Fourth World is great, with chunky linework and a classicly-staunched Darkseid clenching his fists in annoyance. Having Waverider team up with a Silver Age Hal Jordan is a lot of fun and the character has a distinct, devil-may-care tone, with Jurgens drawing the character in a style similar to the Neal Adams days. It’s a dense issue with a lot of fan service, but Jurgens weaves it all into a great launching point for the series. Let’s hope it doesn’t lose steam!

Zero Hour Score: 9.0 – It’s the first issue of the event, baby! Perfect relevance score (of course), and high individual score for being a solid debut!