Zero hour

[Super Monkey]

I don't think he would be able to stand long enough to write that.

[Defender]

Huh?

 -Def.

[Daybreaker]

I thought the idea behind Zero Hour was that all of the flux that had been happening since Crisis was going to be over with, and that they would be proceeding with a solidified timeline.

But no.

Oh, well.  I don't think I liked the timeline they ended up with, anyway.  Superman should be at the beginning of the heroic age.

[Defender]

Superman debuting at the dawn of the heroic age? A neat idea. Maybe they could tailor it along the lines of Superman/Batman: Generations or DC One Million and have Kal-L an older but respected hero, or gone from the Earth after the death of Lois and leaving things to his heir, Superman Secundus.

 Hm. . .writer-sense. . .tingling!

 -Def.

[Super Monkey]

Huh?

 -Def.

he's always dry

[nightwing]

ZH may well have been intended to fix all the continuity gaffes that followed Crisis, but even if it did -- which it didn't -- the only way those fixes would have stuck would have been if the final issue was the last thing DC ever published.  Because every month, in a hundred different places, continuity is undone again and again.

Which just goes to show that maybe continuity isn't such a good thing.  In Weisinger's day, when one man had absolute control over an entire mythos, continuity could be cohesive and consistent. (And had to be, with constant scrutiny from letter-writing fans). In this modern day where "creators" rule and editors exist primarily to stroke their egos and do press conferencs, it's patently impossible.

Anyway, Mark Waid did Jurgens one better with his cross-over event, The Kingdom, which established Hypertime.  Now instead of trying to fix gaffes, DC's official stand is, "Every mistake we ever made, are making or will make is all part of Hypertime and thus not a mistake."  And since the questions and complaints from fans can no longer be dealt with, all the letter columns have been summarily dropped.

It's all part of the motto: "DC Comics: They're Not Fit For Kids Anymore"

Or something like that.

[lastkryptonianhere]

Oh do I miss letter columns - if I were President for a day right after I sign an executive order making Teri Hatcher a Goddess I would propose and have passed in Congress and then ratified by the states an admendment to the Constitution making letter columns a mandatory part of all comics.

As for Zero Hour I have mixed feelings - I liked some parts (the new Starman, Green Arrow's role, the "return of the Multiverse") but the way the JSA was so easily dispatched was reason enough to hate it then the way Hawkworld/Hawkman.

Zero Hour was as an idea a Noble experiment but in reality was not as good as it could have or should have been.

[nightwing]

Well, Crisis and ZH are alike in that sense; both may have been good ideas, and perhaps even necessary things, but they turned to crap somewhere in the execution.  In the case of Crisis, it was a combination of Wolfman being allowed to serve as his own editor (never a good set-up) and not being able to properly end the story because of politics and disorganization.  (Logically the last two issues should have introduced us to the new DC timeline and set up the new versions of Superman, Wonder Woman, et al.  But when issue 12 rolled around, the editors on those books -- and the rest -- still hadn't decided yet what form those reboots would take!).

With Zero Hour I suspect it was much the same.  No one could deny that even 7 years into the new "continuity," things were falling apart in a major way, and something had to be done to stop the bleeding.  But no mini-series, even had it been done well, could have stopped the inevitable slide into chaos (maybe we should call it "discontinuity").  Because that would take strong editorial oversight and the enforcement of strict rules, neither of which seems possible in modern comics.  These days artists and writers are the selling points on comics, not so much characters, and to get the big names you have to promise them the freedom to go nuts.  Byrne was just an early example, but far from the last.  

The real problem is that DC has "Marvelized" itself in the sense of cross-title continuity.  Maintaining a continuity among the  Superman titles, or various mutant titles, is one thing, but trying to maintain a cohesive universe across all published titles may well be impossible.  And yet with all these cross-over events, that's what both companies have forced themselves to do.  Starman's stories must interlock with Power Girl's stories, etc, and that's asking a lot.  You can't on the one hand give a writer total freedom to play with characters and events, and on the other expect him to respect or even keep up with all the crazy stuff his colleagues are pulling on other books.  Personally I'd be happy just for Superman stories to tie together logically, or Batman stories, and see no need for either to tie into each other much less every other title DC publishes.  

Marvel was able to build a company-wide continuity because they started with three or four books and went on from there.  When Crisis ended, DC had how many books in print?  Tons anyway.  Superman wasn't ready to reboot for almost a year afterwards, and Wonder Woman even later than that.  Meanwhile Batman kept going like nothing happened, basically.  With that as a foundation, you'll never have a DCU continuity that's worth spit.  Expecting a four-issue mini-series like Zero Hour to fix all the problems and keep them fixed is about like the Coyote expecting that little umbrella to protect him from a falling boulder.