Zero Hour

{{DC Database:Event Template
 * Image                  = Zero Hour TP.jpg
 * OfficialName           = Zero Hour
 * Distinguish1           = Crisis
 * Aliases                = Crisis In Time


 * Universe               = New Earth
 * Locations              = New York City, Timestream


 * Heroes                 =
 * Villains               = Extant, Parallax
 * Others                 =


 * Origin                 =
 * Titles                 = Zero Hour; Various
 * Collected              = Zero Hour (Collected)
 * Creators               = Dan Jurgens
 * First                  = Zero Hour #4
 * Last                   = Zero Hour #0


 * Quotation              = I used to be the errand boy for the Guardians of the Universe. It was a thankless job. I knew that. I had never asked for anything. The one time that I did, I was denied. It dawned on me then just how unfair the universe really was... how much in need of a makeover. But now it's gone. As are the Guardians. I say we need a new start. A fresh beginning. Done right. I tried this before, you know. But I was limiting myself when I tried to remake Coast City. Fixing one city doesn't help when the whole world... the whole universe is messed up. This is my blank page for creation. My chance to remake everything -- the way it should be.
 * Speaker                = Hal Jordan


 * HistoryText            =

Overview
Zero Hour was a crossover event that took place in 1994, intended to deal with numerous possible futures and alternate timelines in the same way the earlier Crisis on Infinite Earths had dealt with alternate realities. The main storyline featured the destruction of the timestream by the efforts of Parallax (Hal Jordan), attempting to restructure the universe and correct things that he perceived to be wrong. Another supervillain, Extant, took advantage of the chaos and tried to use it to recreate the world in his own image. Leader of the fight against them was Waverider of the Linear Men. The conflict resulted in an entirely new Big Bang, which rebooted the entire with subtle differences. This served as an opportunity to clear up continuity problems, and fix plot elements and pieces of history that no longer worked well.

Publication
Zero Hour: Crisis in Time was a five-issue limited series published in 1994, written and drawn by Dan Jurgens. The issues were published from #4-0, in keeping with the theme of the Countdown to Zero Hour. Crossovers in many other books at the time tied into the main storyline, and even months beforehand many titles foreshadowed it by having their characters experience strange inexplicable time anomalies. In the immediate aftermath, October, 1994 became Zero Month, where all active and new titles published a #0 issue. This gave writers an opportunity to establish changes in continuity that had occurred for their characters during Zero Hour.

Rise of Monarch


In 1991, a new villain from a totalitarian future was introduced, Monarch. Monarch came from forty years in the future, a world where he had killed off every single superhero, leaving himself as the authoritarian dictator of the entire Earth, its lone protector. A single hero opposed him, Waverider, a man fused with the Timestream who traveled back ten years before Monarch's rise to power to prevent his creation. Exploiting a flaw created by Waverider, Monarch followed him back and tried to create his own rise to power ten years before it was supposed to happen. Monarch was revealed to actually be Hawk, Hank Hall, who was driven insane when Monarch killed his partner Dove. Hank killed his future self, becoming Monarch in the process.

With his new powers, Monarch spent a good deal of time fighting Captain Atom all across the timestream. Later, during a conflict with the Linear Men, Monarch leeched a portion of Waverider's abilities to look into his own past, and realized he had become more than simply Hank Hall. He had absorbed Dove, not simply killed her, and become a fusion of the children of the Lords of Chaos and Order. He became Extant, stole Waverider's time gauntlets, and plunged himself into the timestream.

Fall of Hal Jordan


During Reign of the Supermen, Coast City was destroyed by Mongul and Cyborg Superman. Resident hero Green Lantern, Hal Jordan was driven mad by grief, having lost his home and his loved ones. He uses his power ring to recreate Coast City, for which he receives an official summons from the Guardians of the Universe. They reprimand him for violating one of their principal rules by using his ring for personal gain. Enraged, Jordan flies off to Oa with the intention of siphoning the Green Lantern Central Power Battery's powers to recreate his city permanently. He was forced to fight many of his fellow Green Lanterns, many of whom he killed or left for dead after taking their rings. Making it to Oa, he killed Sinestro, Kilowog and all of the Guardians with the exception of Ganthet. He absorbed the full power of the Guardians, and emerged from the Power Battery having taken on a new costume and identity, calling himself Parallax. Ganthet would use the last remaining power he had salvaged to create one last Green Lantern, and imparted the last ring to Kyle Rayner.

Synopsis
The story begins when characters from alternate realities such as Alpha Centurion and Triumph suddenly started appearing in the main DC Universe, to everybody's confusion; this happens because time is being somehow 'compressed.' Then a wave of "nothingness" is seen moving from the end of time to its beginning, erasing entire historical ages in the process (an effect similar to the anti-matter wave that destroyed many universes in Crisis on Infinite Earths).

The apparent villain of the story presented in the miniseries was a character named Extant, formerly Hawk of the duo Hawk and Dove (and a onetime Teen Titan). Extant had acquired temporal powers, using them to unravel the DC Universe's timeline. In a confrontation with members of the Justice Society of America, Extant aged several of them (removing the effect that had kept these heroes of the 1940s vital into the 1990s), leaving them either feeble or dead. However, the true power behind the destruction of the universe—caused by temporal rifts of entropy—turned out to be Hal Jordan, who had been widely regarded as the most distinguished Green Lantern in history. Calling himself Parallax, Jordan had gone insane, and was now trying to remake the universe, undoing the events which had caused his breakdown and his own murderous actions following it. The collective efforts of the other superheroes managed to stop Jordan/Parallax from imposing his vision of a new universe, and the timeline was recreated anew, albeit with subtle differences compared to the previous one, after the young hero Damage, with help from the other heroes, triggered a new Big Bang.

This 'blanking out/recreation' of the DC Universe was reflected in many of the tie-in issues; near the end of several of the tie-ins, the world began to disappear, and the last page of the book (or in some cases, several pages) had been left blank.

Superman
Shortly before Zero Hour, Superman's city was destroyed during the Fall of Metropolis. The heroes of Metropolis also met heroes from another world during Worlds Collide, such as Icon, Hardware, Static and the Blood Syndicate to fight a new supervillain Rift. Although the events of Worlds Collide were erased from history during Zero Hour, Metropolis itself wouldn't be restored until much later (it remained in ruins after the Crisis).

During the Crisis, Superman encountered a number of alternate realities. He first encounters the anomalies when he runs into a large group of alternate versions of Batman. Superman also encountered a timeline where his parents, Jor-El and Lara had been mistaken about Krypton blowing up, had lived on after rocketing him to Earth, and tried to convince him to come back to live with them. A version of Metropolis appeared in which Superman had never been heard of, but the city was protected by Alpha Centurion instead. Another timeline featured a Smallville where Emmett Vale had found the Kryptonian rocket before Jonathan and Martha Kent, killed baby Kal-El and harnessed Kryptonian technology for himself. Superboy, Kon-El also ran into an alternate Superboy, the younger version of Superman from the Silver Age.

In the aftermath of Zero Hour, a new character, Conduit was retconned into Superman's Origins during the Conduit Saga.

Batman
Shortly before the Crisis, Batman had been recovering from Bane breaking his back during Knightfall, and he had only recently recovered his mantle from Azrael.

During Zero Hour, despite the fact that her alter ego Barbara Gordon had been crippled below the waist by the Joker years before, an alternate version of Batgirl reappeared active in Gotham City. Alfred Pennyworth was replaced by his Golden Age counterpart, Alfred Beagle. Batman also saw an alternate reality in which his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne had not been killed by Joe Chill at all, although Batman still pursued the mugger. Robin (Tim Drake) met the original Robin (Dick Grayson) while he was still active as a sidekick. Catwoman met a caveman, and interacted with a Sabretooth Tiger.

After Zero Hour, Batman's origins were changed. The mugger who killed his parents was no longer Joe Chill, but an unidentified assailant, and Batman was no longer aware of who was responsible for the murder. These changes made the earlier Batman: Year Two story apocryphal. Batman was no longer a public figure, but was thought of as being an urban legend. Elements of Batman's origins in crimefighting techniques and in equipment were detailed and clarified. Contrary to her portrayal in Batman: Year One, Selina Kyle had no longer been a prostitute before becoming Catwoman. Not ready to fully return to his responsibilities as Batman, Bruce Wayne passes the mantle onto his first sidekick, Dick Grayson. Grayson's time as Batman would be explored in Batman: Prodigal.

Justice Leagues
Prior to Zero Hour, Power Girl became pregnant by unclear means. Shortly before the Crisis, Justice League International saved humanity from destruction at the hands of Overmaster and the Cadre during Judgment Day. Ice was killed in the conflict.

During the Crisis, Triumph, a hero who claimed to be one of the founding members of the Justice League of America, showed up at the Justice League Embassy asking the JLA for help. Apparently, Triumph had first brought together the original members of the Justice League to combat an alien threat, but had sacrificed himself into the Timestream, and had been automatically corrected out of existence. Using the newer League's help, Triumph was able to finally defeat the alien menace that had trapped him in inter-dimensional stasis for so many years.

After the Crisis, there was some reorganization between the Leagues. Triumph and the Ray joined Justice League Task Force, Hawkman, Nuklon and Obsidian also joined the League. A new Amazing Man debuted, who joined the recently established Extreme Justice.


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