30 Days of Winter Day 24: Last Stand of Hourman!

[pyrotwilight]

Ah, perhaps one of the more bittersweet moments in the JSA series. Issues 65 and 66.

7 Pages from 65 and 5 from 66 (plus covers)



This Last stand will take a bit of more back story.

During the early 90's the JSa were brought back from their Limbo from the Last Days of the Justice Society story after COIE.

DC decided they didn't want old superheroes so they more or less destroyed all of the JSA is Zero Hour, having them get killed by Extant/Hank Hall/guy controlled by Mordru thanks to recent retcons but is now back as Hawk.

One of the heroes killed was Rex Tyler, the first Hourman.

His son was Rick Tyler and later developed a Miraclo based disease bonded to his DNA that he was later cured of in Matthew Tyler, the Hourman Androids series in the late 90's. Matthew was an android whose nanoware was based off of Rex Tylrer's DNA so he was in essence Rex' son as well. 

MAtthew being a time travelling awesome robot decided while he coudn't change the final fate of Rex he could give him one more hour to spend with his son. So Rex was in a time bubble where he could be contacted by Rick. The bubble's time was continuous for Rex but time could pass for months for Rick outside. So every time Rick went in time resumed for Rex, counting down until he'd be returned to the battle with Extant.

This story in 65 and 66 has Rick get severely hurt by an enemy and he used the hourglass that lets him go into the time bubble to get help from his dad, who goes back to the JSA (switching places in essence since someone has to stay in the bubble of time.

And so Rex has to talk to his wife who knows full well her husband is dead and now talking to her, out of time.









The surgery goes well but time in the bubble has ended and Rex has to return to die so that history won't go wonky.









Rick has jumped to switch places with his dad and essentially they have no real way to reach this point in time without using Matthew's kick butt ship.











And so Matthew took the place of his dad Rex to let Rick and Rex stay together. Rex was supposedly working on fixing Matthew but presumably got distracted after making Roxy. Damnit.                                                                                        

Comments

[jaybee3]

And Extant was Hank Hall aka Hawk who apparently no one cares is back alive and super-heroing as if none of that had happened even the Tylers and the rest of the JSA. Captain Boomerang on the other hand was sent back to jail on his resurrection. Something does not compute here (and yes I know according to Dove in a blink-and-you-miss-it recton in JSA Modru was controlling all of Hank's action but still...you would think some JSAer would be pissed or would even bring it up... like Black Canary for instance?).

[pyrotwilight]

Shhhhh.

I think the biggest problem with the retcon alongside say Hal's was how easy it was to manipulate them. It absolves them of blame but doesn't really explain why it wouldn't happen again in the future.

Hal supposedly developed a bit of an immunity to Parallax but Hank it's not really been mentioned and despite the fact Hawk and Dove's powers are magic Hawk was amazingly easy to control.