Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LXXI: Convergence: Zero Hour, Book 2

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2015)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2017

Convergence: Zero Hour, Book 2

Writers: Tony Bedard, Larry Hama, Keith Giffen, and Louise Simonson

Artists: Cliff Richards, Philip Tan & Jason Paz/Rob Hunter, Rick Leonardi & Dan Green, Ron Wagner & Bill Reinhold, Timothy Green II & Joseph Silver, June Brigman & Roy Richardson
Color: John Rauch, Elmer Santos, and Paul Mounts
Letterers: Dave Sharpe, Steve Wands, and Corey Breen

This volume collects the Convergence adventures of five more sets of 1990s heroes, hailing from September 1994 or thereabouts. There's the hook-handed Aquaman (he lost the real hand in September 1994's Aquaman #2); Batman is joined by Azrael, who substituted for him during the Knightfall storyline (February 1993 through August 1994); Kyle Rayner is Green Lantern (he took over in March 1994's Green Lantern #50), and Hal Jordan has become Parallax; Supergirl is a protoplasmic blob from a pocket universe (she adopted the role in February 1992), working for Lex Luthor, who's transferred his brain into a younger, sexier, Australianer, hairier clone body (he first appeared in October 1990; the two dated until Supergirl #4 in May 1994, so there's some timeline wonkiness here); and John Henry Irons, who substituted for Superman while he was dead, is the superhero-in-his-own-right Steel (he got his own series in February 1994).

Maybe I lack nostalgia for these 1990s set-ups (I've read very little of any of them, except clone Luthor and protoplasmic Supergirl both feature in the Death of/World Without a/Return of Superman trilogy). Like all of these Convergence stories, it has to contrive to get the heroes all in the same city; apparently that was because everyone turned up in Metropolis to fight Parallax. Does this mean the city was domed during the events of Zero Hour? I don't remember the events of Zero Hour well enough to say; it seems a pretty tepid explanation that Azrael came to Metropolis because couldn't "miss a gathering of heroes like that." Additionally, the stories are inconsistent as to whether Superman was in the dome or not. He doesn't actually appear, but Kyle includes him among those who forgave Hal for his actions as Parallax, while on the other hand, both Steel and Lex mention that he's absent.

Whatever. Probably none of this really matters, what matters is the story... but I didn't really care about the stories here. It's impossible to care about Aquaman, the Azrael story was pretty uninteresting, and I don't know what planet Keith Giffen was on when he wrote the Supergirl tale, but it is bonkers, and sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way, most often in a what is this i don't even way. I did like that Parallax isn't evil per se (remember Hal's actions were all in aid of trying to bring back the destroyed Coast City), so he ruthlessly fights on behalf of the city against its enemies, and Kyle has to try to stop him from going overboard. But even though in theory I do like the character of Steel, his story still didn't do much for me, even if it did reunite the actual creative team the character had back in the 1990s.

Probably part of the problem is that in three of these stories, the opponents are from the Wildstorm universe. This is definitely thematically appropriate, as Wildstorm is the most 1990s thing of them all, and thank God that Grifter doesn't turn up, but seriously, who gives a shit about Wildstorm? And these folks are like the Wildstorm also-rans; I could tolerate the Authority or maybe even Stormwatch, but Gen¹³ and Wetworks? In two of the stories, it's the denizens of Earth-6, which is kind of random, but thankfully Giffen makes a joke at the expense of that randomness. Earth-6's Lady Quark was a member of L.E.G.I.O.N., which Giffen wrote, and he has a joke about that, though it's anachronistic to say the least.

Anyway, whatever. All the 1990s stuff I cared about was frontloaded in the first Convergence: Zero Hour volume, which didn't leave me with much to enjoy here.

Next Week: Superman, the Question, the Justice League of America, Stephanie Brown, and Nightwing and Oracle battle for their lives in Convergence: Flashpoint, Book 1!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LXX: Convergence: Zero Hour, Book 1

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2015 (contents: 2015)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2017

Convergence: Zero Hour, Book 1

Writers: Justin Gray, Christy Marx, Ron Marz, Frank Tieri, and Fabian Nicieza

Art: Ron Randall, Rags Morales & Claude St-Aubin, Mike Manley & Joe Rubinstein/Bret Blevins, Tom Mandrake, and Karl Moline & Jose Marzan Jr.
Color: Gabe Eltaeb, Nei Ruffino and Sian Mandrake
Letters: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham, Tom Napolitano, and Dave Sharpe

The very concept of Convergence is pretty goofy and not in a good way. Why bring these characters back but distort them by having them live in isolated cities for a year? Surely there must have been a more elegant option available. It doesn't help that no one seems to have told the writers of the tie-ins whether there were any rules for how the city battles worked: some characters are sent into each other's cities by Telos, others fly over on their own volition, some combats begin as soon as the domes go down, others have time to prepare, and this volume introduces (in just one story) the idea that the combats take place on a neutral ground.

Not pictured: some very cheesecake-y Jim Balent stylings.
from Convergence: Catwoman #2 (script by Justin Gray, art by Ron Randall)

Still, the best Convergence stories manage to do something worthwhile with the concept, usually by having some kind of emotional substrate to the battle being told. I don't think Zero Hour, Book 1 contains the best Convergence stories thus far, but it is one of the most consistent books, perhaps because the 1990s had characters with more emotional complexity than the 1970s/80s ones featured in earlier volumes. All five stories collected here cover characters from Metropolis around the time of the Zero Hour, though I'm not sure if from before or after the event itself, fighting the characters of Kingdom Come (published just two years after Zero Hour, so nice and era-appropriate).

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XIV: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 1994
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2013

Zero Hour: Crisis in Time

Writer: Dan Jurgens
Artists: Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Frank Fosco, Ken Branch
Letterers: Gaspar Saladino, Richard Starkings 
Colorists: Gregory Wright, Stuart Chaifetz

This comic is a blatant attempt to replicate the winning formula of Crisis on Infinite Earths, without any understanding of what made that work. I mean, really: the last Crisis gave us a wall of white light destroying alternative dimension after alternative dimensions, slowly approaching our heroes' dimensions. This Crisis gives us a wall of white light destroying future time after future time, slowly approaching our heroes' time. Dan Jurgens isn't even trying here.

But it's a rip-off to no effect, which is the worst kind of rip-off.  CoIE worked because these were places with real history, real meaning being wiped out. Even if you'd never read a story of the multiverse before (as was true for me when I first read CoIE) you can tell that Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-Prime, and all the rest have deep backgrounds-- which is what makes their destructions effective. Heck, CoIE even tricks you into thinking that places like Earth-Four and Earth-Six have been around for a while. In Zero Hour, though, the times are just numbers. It's utterly meaningless-- what's the 64th century to me, or me to the 64th century? Why should I care? I don't.

Which is more the shame because there's a built-in hook here. This story, famously, sees Hal Jordan embrace the role of Parallax and attempt to remake the universe into a better place. He'd had a bum deal in comics over the past several years, including the destruction of his home, Coast City, and Kyle Rayner had already replaced him as the Green Lantern of Earth. Unfortunately, the story isn't actually about this potentially interesting idea, as not just the identity, but even the existence of Parallax, is kept a secret for most of the book. Instead we have to watch Monarch a lot, Monarch being the ill-conceived villain behind the ill-conceived Armageddon 2001 crossover. Seriously, couldn't we just forget that ever happened? Waverider's here too, which isn't helping on that score.

The time mechanics of the story don't make any sense, either. At one point, Monarch-- now "Extant" for some reason-- tells Waverider he's stolen the other's power. "But that's impossible!" he gasps, since he still has his power. But then a past version of Extant shows up and steals Waverider's power. Oh, that's kinda clever if not terribly so. But then the past-Extant merges with present-Extant. So where did present-Extant come from? Argh.

Also: at the end of the prologue, Waverider intones to Rip Hunter (the most '90s "Time Master" of them all, presumably), "we stand on the verge-- of a true crisis!" Oh, the melodrama! But then later Rip Hunter tells Waverider, "A crisis! Check the chronoscopes-- a crisis-- aieee!" Now Waverider has to go look up what a "crisis" is!  Geeze!

So, a lot of people run back and forth, there's some shouting, and like CoIE, Zero Hour struggles to give its heroes something plot-relevant to do, though it's even less successful on that score than CoIE. Why what Hal Jordan is doing is evil is never really clear, either, as it seems like mostly he wants to make our universe the same, but without Barbara Gordon getting shot and Coast City being nuked. Which sounds okay to me. I do like the role of Green Arrow in the climax... but then I would.

Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway do a good job on art, at least. I especially liked how they drew the pre-injury Barbara Gordon Batgirl. It's a shame Jurgens also feels the need to overstuff the book with word balloons and captions; everything is told to the reader at least twice, if not three times. Maybe Jurgens was just on autopilot after the prologue, though, where the captions are always telling you things you can't see, things as basic as that the characters are jumping between time periods. One wonders if Frank Fosco and Ken Branch weren't drawing what they were supposed to, or what.

K. C. Carlson's afterword celebrates that now, anything can happen. "This is just the beginning!" Wasn't that true just nine years ago? Do we really need to do this over again, not as good?