Zero Hour #2 annotations: 60% of the Way Towards the End

 Annotations for Zero Hour #2:

• On sale 7/26/94
• Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode 726 (September 12, 2022)
• Timeline: 8/8/1994, 10/2/2995, and the Beginning of Time

Notes (boldface is directly LSH-related):

• Cover: Team Titans (remember them?) vs the other heroes we saw in New York last issue
• L.E.G.I.O.N. #70 (that’s when Jo tried to go back to the future with Enya but she bailed and his Time Bubble was blocked) came out the same week as this issue of ZH #2, but the events happened concurrently with ZH #3.
• Page 3: Extant says he knows Waverider is going to try to stop the entropy rifts at the beginning and end of time, so he has to prepare his defenses with his “agents of destruction”
• Page 4 panel 3: Emerald Dragon reminds Booster Gold that they met back in BG #8-9 when the Legion found out about when Booster took the flight ring (Ultra Boy, Brainiac 5, and Chameleon Boy)
• Page 8 panel 4: Alan Scott gives his depowered GL ring to Kyle
• Page 9 panel 4: they have to fight the entropy in both the past and the future, so this is how the stranded Legionnaires (Emerald Dragon and SW6 Livewire, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy) can get back home.
• Page 10: back in the 30th century, 10:06 ago (relative to the start of ZH #0) the future team sees the entropy wave over New Earth. We won’t see this in LSH v4 #61, which takes place entirely on Pocket Earth.
• Page 11 panel 3: Throwing the Team Titans under the bus, everyone on the team has been secretly and unknowingly working for Extant the whole time, including Mirage and Terra
• Page 14: Meanwhile, in the past (also 10:06 ago), it’s more Team Titans against the heroes
• Page 16 panel 4: Kyle drops Alan’s ring
• Page 17 panel 2: I’m not going to bother trying to figure out Extant’s timeline, but this version is before he took Waverider’s power (and in panel 3, the future version of Extant is watching his past self)
• Page 17 panel 5: Waverider conveniently sends the heroes back to the 20th century as he’s attacked by Extant and has his power stolen, just like we saw Extant looking like Waverider at the end of last issue
• Page 18 panel 6: someone who we don’t know yet (Parallax) picks up Alan’s ring before the time period vanishes
• Page 20: the heroes have saved the 30th century, hooray!
• Page 21 panel 4: Time Trapper appears and sends the 20th century heroes back to their home time
• Page 22 panel 3: Extant realizes that the 30th century wave must have been stopped but it wasn’t supposed to have gone that way
• Page 23 panel 4: the stranger (Parallax) returns and reopens the rift in the 30th century (and crushes Alan’s ring), meaning the 30th century is in trouble
• The Legion’s story concludes in the next issue of LSH #61, End of an Era part 6 (of 6), which came out the same week as ZH #1, but there’s still a bit more to be told about what happens after that. Plus, Zero Hour continues.
• Somewhere in this issue, I can’t exactly fit where, the team of Booster Gold and Blue Beetles I, II, and III plus the Blue Beetle of the 27th century encounter Parallax and Extant in the time stream in Booster Gold vol 2 #0 (which was marketed as a Zero Hour tie-in in 2008). We haven’t really seen Parallax yet and don’t know who he is, but Extant seems to be working for Parallax and mentions that the “old men” of the JSA won’t get in their way, and Extant left Alan Scott alone because Hal wanted Alan to see him remaking the universe in his image to show Alan how much Hal had surpassed him. As Booster and the Beetles escape, Parallax says “I don’t want them talking, Extant, I don’t want anyone knowing you’re working with me, not yet.” Extrant tries to blast the time sphere, saying “our rift of draining entropy has already destroyed the 64th century, it will annihilate the 25th soon enough” as Extant pushes Rip Hunter’s time machine back to the 25th century. We saw Wally (as Flash) fall while fighting Abra Kadabra in the 64th century back in ZH #4, and the 25th century will fade out with Booster in ZH #1.
• Thanks to Gary at Crisis on Earth Prime for some help with the annotations

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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). While trying to save NYC, Emerald Dragon reminds Booster Gold that they’ve met before. Afterwards, Waverider tells the heroes that they must try to stop time from eating itself in the past and in the future; the Legionnaires choose to go on the future mission, as this is their only way home. (Zero Hour #2)
• Beginning of Time: Waverider leads a team to the distant past. They are attacked by Extant, and Waverider sends the heroes back to their own time (Zero Hour #2).
• 10/2/2995: Meanwhile, Superman leads a team to New Earth in the 30th century where they see “the end of time and space”. Metron devises a plan to stop the future from collapsing; Captain Atom blasts Metron’s Mobius Chair inside a boom tube which apparently saves the day in the future. Polestar arrives with Time Trapper, who sends the 20th century heroes back to their home while the Legionnaires remain in the 30th century (Zero Hour #2).
• 8/8/1994: Extant says that he was not supposed to lose in the 30th century (Zero Hour #2).
• 10/2/2995: A little while later later, someone appears in the 30th century and reopens the rift in time to make sure things happen correctly (Zero Hour #2).