Justice Society Returns: Hourman mocking Dr. Mid-Nite's origin

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

Dr Mid-Nite is a pretty cool guy. I mean, he has a cool costume with goggles and little crescent moons and he battles evil with the power of medicine. Unlike many others, he actually IS a Doctor. But his origin... well, let's say Hourman is being a dick here, but I think most people here would mock it, too.



Justice Society Returns is a comic about the original JSA, so this are Charles McNider and Rex Tyler, not Pieter Cross and Rick Tyler. I feel I have to say this, because there's pretty much no way to tell these Legacy heroes apart. I think mostly DC just thought, damn, the old Hourman and Mid-Nite aren't available, so we'll have to make new ones.

In any case, they're on an island off Scotland, where the Allies are busy creating super-anthrax, and they're also battling a supervillain. What better time for Mid-Nite to explain why he has a pet owl?



Unfortunately, Hourman is high on miraclo and this is how he replies:



But fear not, in the end they reconcile, and both the owl and the drug prove to be useful... when Hourman feeds the owl some miraclo.




And that is how some evil guy in a super-anthrax lab was defeated by Hootie the Owl.

Comments

[nowhere_girl16.insanejournal.com]

Whooreee!=Best sound effect ever........Lmfao. An owl on drugs is the funniest shit ever. Although it probably violates some kind of animal abuse laws and several drug laws.And i love that he used an engineered drug that could be used to give more people superpowers to get an owl high as a kite.

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

I dunno, this is set in 1945, I don't think there were many animal abuse laws around ;)

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

In the UK? Yes there would have been, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824, and became the ROYAL Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1840 when Queen Victoria granted it patronage.

A Government act preventing cruelty to cattle came into being in 1922, and more general "Cruelty to Animals Act" came about in 1849 and 1876.

[dr_hermes.insanejournal.com]

Wasn't Hooty dying and they gave him the Miraclo out of desperation? It wasn't, "Hey, you know what would be fun, your owl all wired."

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

Context is for the weak ;)

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

With Hourman, I imagine it was a little of Column A, a little of Column B

[autolychus2.insanejournal.com]

I don't know why, but when I was a kid, my favorite JSAer was Hourman. Now I know -- "I love that clock!"

LOL

[sianmink.insanejournal.com]

WHOOREEE!!

[beoweasel.insanejournal.com]

When did Rorschach become a owl? :O

[leikomgwtfbbq.insanejournal.com]

He's been hangin' out with Daniel too long.

[autumn_lily.insanejournal.com]

Dude, it might just be from the fact that my friend just tried to get me into Daniel/Walter slash but the first thing that came to my mind after reading you comment was that the owl was their love-child...

[sdinma.insanejournal.com]

Didn't Hootie fly straight through the guy's chest? I thought the JSA frowned on murder? I guess it's OK because he's a bird of prey...

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

They frown on it, but it IS during WWII.

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

In another issue Jay Garrick fights another of these dudes and remarks that he isn't usually this violent but these beings have no soul/aren't human.

[dr_hermes.insanejournal.com]

Hourman is enjoying the punchline to a very old genre of joke that was popular during the war. "Why did the little moron throw the clock out of the window? Because he wanted to see time fly."

I suppose today someone would object to "moron" and register a complaint.

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

Really? I'm in awe of the writer's mad research skills then!

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana!"

[dr_hermes.insanejournal.com]

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.

Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

[autolychus2.insanejournal.com]

Women should be obscene and not heard.

God, I love Groucho.

[kusonaga.insanejournal.com]

Fun stuff.

By the by, I'd say Pieter and Rick are quite different from their predecessors.

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

I dunno, if someone pasted in Liberty Belle I might think this was Rick. Joking, of course. There are differences (for one thing, Rick isn't usually a dick to anyone when he takes miraclo, and Pieter can hardly go an issue without talking about religion) but they're subtle. And their costumes are almost identical, down to the owl as accessory pet. One thing you got to love about JSA. They keep the costumes, even the silly ones like Hourman.

[kusonaga.insanejournal.com]

Well, Rick did update the costume a bit. I have to say I'm a fan of the Hourman costume either way. It's a little silly, but it has a good visual, and it's quite fitting for the kind of guys the two Tylers are.

As it stands, I'd still say there are some more overt differences - even if I have to admit Rick doesn't always get the chance to show it over in JSA. The two Doc's are quite similar in demeanour and look, but Pieter's had the benefit of characterisation. Of the early JSA'ers, I think McNider is one of the least developed, ain't he?

....Frank Miller as an Owl

[hawkzombie.insanejournal.com]

PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one to realize the owl is screaming WHORE!

Re: ....Frank Miller as an Owl

[autumn_lily.insanejournal.com]

It's never just you dear!

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

And yet I can't see anyone in the DCU making fun of Batman's origin...

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

Well no. His origin is... original. But on the other hand, Dr. Mid-Nite owl-epiphany makes a lot more sense than Batman's.

[goldenbrowngod.insanejournal.com]

Hourman mocks Batman's origin all the time

"Ha ha your parents are dead"

luckily those lines get edited out of comics.

[manofbats.insanejournal.com]

Superman: "I was loaded into a rocket, shot into space, and crashed in Kansas."

Green Lantern: "That's weird... but no weirder than mine. I was flying and green ring given to me by a dead alien recruited me into a intergalactic police force."

B'wana Best: "I wear a magic helmet."

Batman: "THEY SHOT MY PARENTS!"

Superman: "Way to kill the party bro."

[autumn_lily.insanejournal.com]

It's a good thing Batman doesn't drink...

[sir_mikael.insanejournal.com]

Though the way their origins is told here (yeah yeah at least Mid-Nites), I totally thought they were spoofinf Batsys "Superstition is a cowardly lot"-bit with the bat in the window.

[zegim.insanejournal.com]

Nice! Dr. Mid-Nite is the kind of character I can't do anything but love.

And! Nice icon!

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

I know it's the wrong Mid-Nite and thus the wrong Hootie, but am I the only one who gets a chuckle out the notion that the reason Black Canary downplayed her relationship with Pieter is because of the bad memories of his owl screaming "Whooreee!" at her all the time because it felt jealous.

[autumn_lily.insanejournal.com]

To be fair, it's no worse than when she has to sit on the perch and yell it at Ollie and Hal...

[jaybee3.insanejournal.com]

I feel I have to say this, because there's pretty much no way to tell these Legacy heroes apart. I think mostly DC just thought, damn, the old Hourman and Mid-Nite aren't available, so we'll have to make new ones.

Actually both Hourman and Dr. Midnite were killed off to make way for the newbies - in Hourman's case it was the Android Hourman with Rex Tyler's DNA and in Midnite's case he got replaced with basically an expy version of himself - really Pieter is just a younger version of Charles. In both cases (and with Dr. Fate and The Atom and Johnny Thunder) it was a case of DC thinking the Golden Agers were old and unrelatable so they killed most of them off in one shot in Zero Hour, having them punked by Extant.

[catbirdseat.insanejournal.com]

I didn't count the android because it WAS different, although I think DC made a good choice in replacing him with a carbon copy of Rex, because while Rick isn't one of my favourites, I still like him better than the Hourman android.

But I had no real idea what had happened to Charles McNider. Poor guy, he deserved better.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Actually both Hourman and Dr. Midnite were killed off to make way for the newbies

In Doctor Mid-Nite's case that's hardly true. McNider was killed in 1994, Pieter Cross didn't show up until five years later in 1999. Hardly a connected series of events.

[jaybee3.insanejournal.com]

True but they did kill off McNider because he was OLD (I think Carlin or whoever was the editor of ZH has admitted this, as did Jurgens who wrote ZH and had a editorial mandate to get rid of the JSA). Pieter appeared years later but he was heavily influenced (in-story and out) by McNider. Which brings the question - why didn't they just keep the original. I mean they kept Wildcat alive but not Midnite?

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Because as a reader at the time it was getting absurd, and irritating, after Crisis merged the worlds, having heroes who had been active in World War II looking like they'd only aged 15 years in 50 years. They were sort of clogging up the place. The "Ian Karkulls temporal fallout" worked as long as you didn't have to think about it too much (such as when they were on Earth-2), but when they were always around, it got... silly.

They had already tried removing Wildcat, by crippling him in Crisis, allowing Yolanda Montez to take over the roleas a Hispanic, female Wildcat, but she never caught on, and met the same end at the same time as the new black, female Doctor Midnight (who ate least spelled her name properly).

Personally, I'd have let the JSA characters die of old age long ago, but that's just me.