Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! with Paul Kaminski
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about Zero Hour! Our host this week is Paul Kaminski!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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Notes
DC Universe Event Storytelling
The discussion highlights how the Zero Hour Crisis in Time omnibus delivers a masterclass in orchestrating a cohesive superhero universe across multiple titles (01:24).
Dan Jurgens’ leadership on Zero Hour showed expert control of the DC universe narrative, blending characters and eras into one unified story (02:51)
Jurgens combined multiple creative teams’ efforts under a single vision, providing coherence to a sprawling event.
The storytelling balanced nostalgia, surprises, and straightforward superhero drama effectively.
This approach gave readers a vivid sense of a lived-in, interconnected DC universe.
The event’s complexity was managed without digital tools, relying on physical scripts and printouts.
The event stands as a key example of 1990s DC storytelling style and structure with a wide range of tones and genres across titles (05:52)
It included diverse styles: horror noir in Hawkman, classic superhero stories in Superman and Batman, and experimental stories like the silent Green Arrow issue.
Lesser-known characters like Damage were given major roles, enriching the story’s depth.
The omnibus serves as a snapshot of DC’s mid-90s era, reflecting the company’s creative diversity and market position.
This period had DC competing with Marvel’s dominance while still producing successful hits.
Continuity and Universe Management
The event’s primary function was to address and streamline DC continuity issues while still delivering an engaging story (09:06).
Zero Hour aimed to straighten out conflicting timelines and story paths to restore clarity after Crisis on Infinite Earths (09:06)
Notable changes included reshaping Legion of Superheroes continuity and altering character arcs like Hawk and Dove merging.
The villain Extant was integrated into the story as a continuity-driven antagonist.
The event was remembered more for its structural fixes than its story, but it performed well on both fronts.
Jurgens’ story balanced continuity corrections with punchy, colorful action sequences.
The event’s legacy is tied to its success in blending story with continuity fixes while maintaining reader engagement (10:32)
It preserved the fun spirit of Crisis on Infinite Earths with a fresh 90s tone.
The story’s melodrama and bold action made it feel lively and relevant despite being a second major crisis event.
The omnibus format allows readers to appreciate both the narrative and its role in DC history.
It demonstrates how continuity management can coexist with strong storytelling.
Creative Collaboration and Production Context
The production of Zero Hour reflected a complex, pre-digital creative process involving many contributors (04:22).
Editor Casey Carlson and Dan Jurgens coordinated multiple writers, artists, and editors across titles to ensure event cohesion (04:22)
The team worked with printouts and physical scripts, moving pages around to track storylines.
This analog method demanded intense coordination and attention to detail.
Diverse creative voices contributed unique styles that still fit into the unified event.
The process shows the challenge and craftsmanship involved in large comic events before digital workflows.
The anthology-style omnibus captures this creative diversity and era-specific artistry across DC’s line in the mid-90s (07:14)
Iconic contributors like Mark Waid and notable covers by artists like Balent appear throughout.
The variety in tone and art styles reflects the experimental and evolving nature of comics at the time.
This snapshot reveals DC’s creative strengths and market challenges during a competitive period.
The collection provides a rich, immersive experience for fans wanting to explore DC’s 1994-95 era.
Personal and Strategic Reflections
Paul Kaminski’s reflections reveal both personal engagement and strategic insights into DC’s evolving storytelling (00:00).
Kaminski’s journey from Marvel reader to DC insider informs his fresh appreciation of DC’s complex events (00:00)
His deep dive into Zero Hour expanded his understanding beyond iconic characters like Superman and Batman.
His work with Dan Jurgens on Superman titles gave him insight into superhero storytelling craft.
Kaminski values events that show the interconnectedness and depth of the DC universe.
He recommends the omnibus as a must-read for fans interested in classic yet dynamic comic events.
The discussion sheds light on DC’s market position and cultural context during the 90s (09:06)
Despite DC’s strong titles, Marvel was culturally dominant, shaping industry dynamics.
Kaminski speculates on the mixed feelings of competing in a market where Marvel overshadowed DC.
The event’s ability to maintain fun and cohesion reflects DC’s resilience and creative vision.
This perspective highlights how business and cultural factors influence storytelling strategies.
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it.
00:07
Hello, trade school listeners. This is Paul Kaminski, group Editor, Metropolis Group at DC Comics. And I'm here on the podcast today to talk about one of my favorite trades for trade school. And this was a recent addition for me into my sort of canon of collective understanding of the DC universe. Because growing up as a Marvel kid, I wasn't all the way familiar with all of the DC events going back through time. I remember when I was, I guess, about 16 years old, I read Crisis on Infinite Earths for the first time. And that was really my introduction to beyond the worlds of Superman and Batman kind of DC Universe stuff. And at the time it was eye opening because I was like, wow, there's this whole other world out here that I didn't even know about. And it was very brightly colored.
01:03
There was a lot of storied history there. And Marv Wolfman and George Perez delivered something that on its face, kind of should have felt like a textbook for me, but instead felt kind of like home in a weird way. And I'll never forget that I was away at a a family wedding reading that for the first time. But I'm not here to talk about Christ on Infinite Earths today, because I'm sure someone has talked about that already. I'm here to talk about the one after that, the crisis after that. So my pick here is Zero Hour Crisis in Time omnibus. And this is the whole ding dang thing. This is the event from the mid-90s, plus all of the tie in issues and all of the lead in issues.
01:47
And much like Crisis on Infinite Earths, it gave me some of the same feeling like, wow, this is a lived in universe with a lot of colorful characters, not all of which I was overly familiar with. I've been at D.C. now 11 years, so I've met and interacted and guided the destiny of a lot of corners of the DC Universe. But even still reading through this, there was significant surprises for me just as a reader. And I've been on an intensive sort of study mission these last few years to try and catch up on everything that I had ever missed from the DC Collective canon throughout time. And that is not a small task to try and perform. But Zero Hour was pretty high on my list, partly because of my relationship with Dan Jurgens.
02:37
Dan and I did the Superman Action Comics Rebirth run together. I was the associate editor on that book, joining Mike Cotton, who was the editor at the time, and we worked with a variety of different artists to bring that story to life. And working on a twice monthly book with Dan Jurgens was an eye opening experience for me because the man is a master of that particular craft. He knows exactly what he wants. He knows exactly how to tell just the straight over the plate superhero story. He knows exactly the amount of surprises to throw in there. The kind of nostalgia hits, you want all of that stuff. And while Dan and I had quite a bit of back and forth over the years, we always sort of wound up seeing eye to eye in the end.
03:24
And I had a good relationship with Dan. Recently we did a Superman treasury edition called Hero for All with artist Bruno Redondo. And that was a similarly fulfilling experience. So anyway, I'm very familiar with Dan, but I was not familiar with the level to which he show ran this zero hour event in the mid-90s. And much as I suspected it would be, it was a masterclass in superhero storytelling. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what I liked about it, what I liked about the lead in the series itself and of course the villain. So I think overall my biggest takeaway from this was, wow, that is how you orchestrate and move around the D.C. universe. It was, I'm sure, heavily influenced by, I believe, editor Casey Carlson worked on this one.
04:17
And he probably had quite a hand in orchestrating said universe. But you could really feel Dan's presence as it moved through the different books and the different characters, the different eras, all of that. And reading the foreword was fascinating because Dan talked about, hey, this was in the days before Internet and ubiquitous computers. Some computer, but not all computer style of working. And so he would just be surrounded by printouts and pages and script and just moving it all around his room and, you know, kind of like maybe a murder mystery enthusiast or sort of Internet sleuth would try and track down some sort of killer today. He was moving all these different characters around the page and you can really feel the cohesion. And that was the thing I admired the most about this.
05:09
In fact, I think the surprising thing for me was that while I enjoyed the actual Event series itself, the thing that I most enjoyed was reading this snapshot of the DC universe because all the different writers, all the different creators, artists, letters, colors, everybody editors at the time, all participated in it. And so you get this incredible swath of different, like, corners and styles of comics, but they're all moving toward the same aim. You have this sort of like horror noir Hawkman thing. And you've got the Superman stuff, which I'm extremely familiar with. You have a. What I would describe as a continuity festival over in Legion of Superheroes, which is another big favorite of mine. You have the Dark Stars off doing their sort of trippy space stuff.
06:04
You have this sort of cynical era of Green Lantern kind of weaving in and out of this. In fact, Green Lantern, this is such an odd place in that character's history because it's a character trying to figure out what it is in this sort of more. I don't know, I guess cynical is the right word kind of DC universe. Like, what do you do with a character like that? You can see the teams wrestling with this question. You get the Bat books, so you get sort of the more straight over the plate kind of superhero bat books, but you also get sort of the odd duck bat books. Some of these things where the. The art style radically changes and almost has a more of like an indie feel, like a mid-90s indie feel.
06:49
You get a completely silent Green Arrow issue during this thing, which is cool and effective and somehow ties into the overall story, even though you wouldn't necessarily expect it to, but there you go. And then one of the bigger surprises for me was how much I enjoyed reading about the character Damage. Now, of course, this is not the New age of Heroes damage that everyone would remember. This is the damage of the mid-90s where, yeah, this guy was just. He had a lot going on and he was really at the center of a lot of this action. And I admired that about the this too, because it would be not the most obvious pick in the world for a character that is not as well known or maybe new to be so principal in all of the action.
07:42
But there he is, there's Damage doing incredibly important work within the context of the story. You have really just a fascinating look at mid-90s superhero, sort of post British Invasion or mid British Invasion comics with this Anima character. You have the Catwoman stuff, the Balent covers smack dab in the middle of that. Just like a scrapbook, almost like a snapshot in time, a moment in time for what D.C. was in 94, 95 timeframe. And I really loved that about this book. In fact, what it made me want is more omnibus collections like that where you can get a sense of what the entire line was doing for a period of time where whatever year you want to sort of target. But it was fascinating and, you know, dc, I think, was riding pretty high at that point.
08:56
Dan Jurgens Certainly riding pretty high at that point after the death of Superman. And you had this business with Azrael and Batman breaking his back and all of that. And, you know, you got Mark Waid on the Flash. You know, you've got really some. Some hits going for you. But, you know, Marvel was still, at least from my vantage point as a reader at that time, kind of ruling the roost. And so you have a DC that's still kind of on its back foot in a way. It's a funny position to be in as a company. And I'll have to ask Dan, when next I talk to him about what it sort of felt like to kind of simultaneously have the most successful comics of the moment and still kind of have to wrestle with the cultural conversation of Marvel Comics, overshadowing some things.
09:43
Of course. Dan did work for both companies, so I'm sure that the element of competition was maybe not quite so much on his mind. But it's a fascinating time. And then you have the story itself, which is the product of continuity, really. I mean, continuity seems to be the origin of it. You have Hawk and Dove sort of fusing to become this extant character. And Extant turns out to just be a minion of the actual bad guy. And all this hyper maximized melodrama going on, set against these really bright colors and bombastic action. And, you know, big punches, not just literal punches from the characters themselves, but, you know, these. These is a punchy story. Felt like a punchy story. A lot of swings being taken and bold. It was old as hell.
10:41
And I gotta say, I walked away from this thing thinking, man, the DC universe was fun. You know, I mean, it still is for me, and I'm sure is different fun for different people at different times. But this version of the DC universe was fun, super fun, and in my opinion, really captured the spirit of Crisis on Infinite Earths in ways I wasn't expecting it to because, you know, there's been a lot of crises at DC over the years. And I think Zero Hour mainly is remembered these days for what it was attempting to do to the continuity, almost the mechanical function of it, straightening out certain continuities, kind of putting different books down different paths, certainly Legion of Superheroes chief amongst them, but kind of restoring maybe a couple of things that the Christ on Infinite Earth did.
11:39
So it's not often remembered as a story, at least not from my perceptions, limited as they may be. But I really enjoyed it as a story, too. And I think it actually stands up right next to Christ line Infinite Earths and what Marvin George did. It's hard to be the second one, right? And obviously there were events before this, but not another, like, sort of big crisis event. It's hard to be the second big one of the modern era, so big shoes to fill, certainly. But looking back, I think it's actually aged really well.
12:13
You know, you would expect this to be a big old 90s extravaganza, and it is, don't get me wrong, but it also, like, I don't know, it resonated with me as a reader, and maybe it's just because I grew up in the 90s, but it certainly resonated with me as a reader. And I just. I just had the best time reading through this. So if you haven't actually given Zero Hour Crisis in Time a read ever, like, I hadn't fully. Like, I had read it a bit, but not fully. I really would recommend you read this omnibus version because you're gonna get this huge, big chunk of DC comics, and it's just the best, most fun universe to play in because it feels so cohesive. Everything feels like it's touching everything else in all the right ways.
13:02
So if you're into that style of storytelling, I think you have a ball with this. And if you're just interested in reading cool event comics in general, like, hey, this is a great example of the ultimate display of comic book craft at the periodical level. And as my children, as you hear sort of ambiently in the background, are fond of saying, dad, I love Superman. So if you love Superman, if you love dc, hey, give this a look, see, and travel back in time to a crisis that deserves to be recognized as one of the big ones out there. And thanks to Case for having me on this podcast, and I hope you all have a happy reading.
13:44
Hey, Jay. Hey, Jim. You're a fan of the Legion of Superheroes, right? Yeah, I've been reading their adventures for decades. Me too. It was tough at first with all the characters, but now I think I'm an expert. It's not too hard to get into the Legion. And to make it even easier, we have a podcast called Long Live the Legion. We talk about different aspects of all its history to help you out. So whether you're a new reader in the Legion Academy or have your own flight ring or anywhere in between, along live, the Legion podcast should be on your playlist.
14:15
CPOV certainpov.com.
Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/