Zero Hour #3 annotations: 40% of the Way Towards the End

 Annotations for Zero Hour #3:

• On sale 7/19/94
• Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode 723 (August 22, 2022)
• Timeline: 8/8/1994 and the End of Time

Notes:

• Cover:
• Alan Scott got young recently in Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #5
• Impulse had just appeared in Flash #92 a couple months prior, the same month that we saw LSH v4 #59 and Legionnaires #16. We find out that he is Iris Allen’s grandson by way of his son Don, formerly one of the Tornado Twins (who, in a retcon, were not merely descendants of the Flash as they had originally claimed, but his children).
• Page 1: another Crisis, another Flash dead
• Pages 2-3: The JSA thinks they can handle Extant. Narrator: They could not. When did Alan Scott get young again?
• Page 4 panel 2: Superman’s story happens over in Superman #93
• Page 5 panel 7: Metron notes that Impulse is from the 30th century; this will come into play later.
• Page 6: Time Trapper reveals himself to Rokk, that the two of them are really temporal duplicates (as previously seen in Valor #23)
• Page 7 panel 3: Booster notes that this is the middle of the night. This is helpful for my chronology. Best as I can tell, this is late on August 8, 1994, and the day started with Jo trying to leave with Enya in LEGION #70, and continued with him meeting the SW6 founders, and Superman gathering the troops via Metron and GL.
• Page 7 panel 4: Power Girl is magically pregnant for some reason.
• See this article for all the details you never wanted to know
• Pages 8-9: the traditional "super-heroes gather for a crisis" 2-page spread
• Page 11 panel 3: the current Hawkman battles the Hawk avatar, which is the root source for all of the various Hawkmen
• Page 12: See Hawkman #13 for more of this transformation stuff
• Page 13 panel 1: Vril Dox launches a probe into the time stream to try to figure out what’s going on, as seen back in LEGION #70 (LOSP 718); the probe appears next in ZH #1
• Page 14 panel 1: Kyle is still new to being a GL
• Page 14 panel 2: Superman ran into several Batmen in Superman: Man of Steel #37 and Batman #511; Metamorpho's new look debuted in Justice League International #61
• Page 14 panel 3: both Batgirl and Alpha Centurion are time anomalies
• Page 14 panel 5: Maxima has lost her shoulder pads
• Page 16 panel 1: Dick, Donna, and Roy hear about Wally – all of them have graduated to other heroic identities by this point when they started as the Teen Titans. For some reason Arsenal was not in that earlier 2-page spread.
• Page 16 panel 4: Guy and Atom think they might be able to restore Hal Jordan and keep him from going Emerald Twilight
• Page 17: do we take a drink for dead JSAers? Here we lose Atom and Dr Fate
• Page 20: and down go Dr Midnite and Hourman
• Hourman's last ditch attack against Extant would be revisited several years later in the pages of the JSA series. Though it appears he dies here, the android Hourman from the future actually takes his place, stepping between seconds and allowing Rex to continue living a full life.
• Page 21 panel 1: Anima is here but didn’t appear in that 2-page spread earlier
• Not much for the Legion in this issue, but it was nice of Superman to invite Emerald Dragon and the SW6 founders to the party.
• Thanks to Gary at Crisis on Earth Prime for some help with the annotations

Finally, it turns out that this was the week I first got online, as recounted in part here in this old blog post. I got my first computer in spring of 1994 and after some experimenting in local BBSs, I joined Compuserve and found the Comics and Animation Forum right as Zero Hour was wiping out the Legion: I got to experience one issue of Zero Hour (issue #2) before the Legion issue (#61) which was the end of End of an Era. I had finally found some kindred spirits, people who I could talk to about my hobby who knew exactly what I was talking about and didn't look at me funny. Lots of fun people and big-name pros (Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, Jeff Moy, Neil Gaiman, Tony Isabella, Bob Rozakis, etc.). I made some friends online there who are still close today.

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Cutting down the timeline to just the last few days of story as we get close to Zero Hour. I'm color coding them based on whether the date appeared in the 2995 Sourcebook (yellow), it's a confirmed date that was given in the comic (green), or an estimated date based on keeping track of events and days (cyan). Bold text is something new added this issue. Italics are unknown dates.

Due to the timelines in the stories bouncing between 2995 and 1994 and things happening "simultaneously" 1001 years apart, I'm keeping the events in the order that they happen to the people involved, not strictly chronological by day and year. To make it easier to follow, the 1994 dates will be in red text and anything outside of time (like at the beginning or end of time) will be in blue text.

• Fri 9/29/95: Arriving at Weber’s World, the team tries to stop the Khunds’ bombs from destroying the planet; Dawnstar arrives and meets Wildfire; Firefist kills Veilmist; and after studying at the Infinite Library, Glorith travels to Tharn where she restores Mordru’s powers to help her conquer the universe (LSHv4 #58). Meanwhile, SW6 Brainy & Triad find that Valor has been retconned from history (Valor #13, Legionnaires #16 pages 9-10), so a team of Legionnaires goes back in time to find out what happened (Valor #14, Legionnaires #16 page 10).
• Outside of time: the Legionnaires enter the time stream and crash their Time Bubble (Valor #15); the Legionnaires fight Valor and find out that Lori is Glorith (Valor #16), and then fight Glorith, but Valor succumbs to the effects of his lead poisoning and dies; SW6 Valor appears (Valor #17); Brainiac 5 tells SW6 Valor that he will have to spend another 1000 years in the Phantom Zone in order to save time, and Valor does not take it well (Valor #18), but the presence of Waverider and seeing his fellow Legionnaires vanish changes his mind. Once he accepts his fate, the Legionnaires appear back in their own time and the legend of Valor is restored (Valor #19, Legionnaires #16 page 11. From Vanishing Point, the Linear Men see a timequake affect the 30th century (Valor #20), which causes Dream Girl and Star Boy to appear (Legionnaires #16).
• The Legionnaires instantly return to their present, unaware of their meeting with Glorith and the Valors (Valor #15-19, Legionnaires #16 page 11); Star Boy, Dream Girl, and Bouncing Boy appear with the Legionnaires and Ferro Lad is long dead, leading Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad – who seem to be the only ones aware that something funny is going on – to take a Time Bubble to figure it out (even though Invisible Kid and Rond Vidar are secretly aware that something’s happening); Polestar appears at New Earth (Legionnaires #16, LSHv4 #59); Rond, SW6 Brainiac 5, and SW6 Invisible Kid arrive on Weber’s World in a time bubble at the same time as with Mon-El, Shadow Lass, and Dev-Em, but they're all too late to prevent the death of Laurel Gand from the Khund bomb; Jo leaves for 1994 to find Tinya (LSHv4 #59). The SW6 Legionnaires confront Polestar at New Earth (Legionnaires #17).
• Sat 8/6/1994: Valor tries to re-create the feats he did before he went into the Phantom Zone, but fails; the Linear Men watch Valor from Vanishing Point (Valor #20). As a result of the timeline issues, Valor splits into multiple copies of himself and manages to do all the things that legend said he did over the years, in just a few hours, then resigns himself to having Glorith send him back to the Bgztl Twilight dimension. But the Linear Men realize it’s too late, the future is doomed (Valor #21).
• Sun 8/7/1994: Jo Nah arrives from the future in the time bubble (L.E.G.I.O.N. #68). He meets who he thinks is Tinya, but it turns out to have been her cousin Enya all along. He wants to bring her back to the 30th century (L.E.G.I.O.N. #69).
• Sat 9/30/95: Laurel Gand is laid to rest on Shanghalla in a ceremony attended by a number of adult and SW6 Legionnaires, after which Glorith and Mordru attack the group with replicas of some of their old foes and kidnap Rokk, and then Dawnstar fades out (Legionnaires #17). Valor and others go to New Earth to help RJ Brande bring Pocket Earth into this universe, but while the Subs and several Legionnaires blink out of existence, Pocket Earth turns out to be unstable and will explode in 72 hours (Valor #22). Rokk tries but can’t escape Mordru and Glorith (LSHv4 #60).
• Sun 10/1/95: Rokk escapes Mordru and Glorith by going into the Infinite Library; the surviving members of the adult and SW6 Legions meet on Winath to help look for Rokk, but when Glorith and Mordru show up on Talus seeking the Time Beacon, the Legions go there. The magicians call forth the Infinite Man, and then they take his powers. Gim Allon disappears when his SW6 counterpart Leviathan is killed (LSH v4 #60). Mordru and Glorith begin to remake the universe, and the Legion teams fight them and their evil dopplegangers. But one by one, more Legionnaires fade out. Mysa manages to break Mordru and Glorith apart which causes their spell to fail, at least temporarily, before she fades out (Legionnaires #18). Valor and Shadow Lass meet Pre-Crisis Superboy, who helps the Legions fight Glorith and Mordru. The team beats Glorith, and her Infinite Man powers flow to Valor. He then dumps it all on Mordru, who is unprepared to have his mind merge with the universe. Mordru teleports away into the core of Pocket Earth, which is ready to explode in a couple of days. Valor and Shady vanish, and after Superboy makes a rousing speech, he too vanishes (Valor #23).
• End of Time: Time Trapper is blasted by someone unknown, who starts to destroy time from the end going backwards and from the dawn of time going forwards (Zero Hour #4).
• 8/8/1994: Jo tries to go back to the future with Enya/Phase, but at the last second she leaves him and returns to her L.E.G.I.O.N. team (L.E.G.I.O.N. #70). His time bubble is blocked from going to the future moments later. SW6 Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Livewire fall out of the timestream in 1994, where they are met by Jo (Legionnaires #18). Meanwhile, the pre-Crisis Earth-1 Kal-El Superboy appears after helping the Legion and meets Kon-El Superboy in Smallville. Kal-El quickly realizes that this is a mix of his town and the post-Crisis Byrne version, and after a fight with Kon-El he realizes that he is the time anomaly here. Kon-El tells Kal-El that he will carry on the job as Superboy, and Kal-El vanishes (Superboy v3 #8). Batman, Superman, Metron, and GL Kyle Rayner contact heroes, including Emerald Dragon and the SW6 founders (Legionnaires #18) and Kon-El (Superboy v3 #8), to join up in New York City (Zero Hour #4). Metron notices that Impulse is from the 30th century (Zero Hour #3).
• End of Time: Rokk spends an infinite amount of time in the Infinite Library and meets the Time Trapper when he finally escapes (Legionnaires #18). The Time Trapper explains his history and reveals that the SW6 Legionnaires were taken from time by him, not cloned by the Dominators. But their continued existence warped time and caused the Trapper to go insane trying to “fix” things to actually protect the Legion from the Zero Hour energy wave (Valor #23). He then reveals himself to Rokk that the two of them are really temporal duplicates (Valor #23, also shown in Zero Hour #3).
• 8/8/1994: In the middle of the night, SW6 Saturn Girl, Livewire, and Cosmic Boy and Emerald Dragon join the gathering of heroes, including Superboy and Impulse (Zero Hour #3). Vril Dox launches a probe into the time stream to try to figure out what’s going on; it will reappear in ZH #1 (L.E.G.I.O.N. #70, Zero Hour #3).