This Retcon Totally Changed the DC Universe Forever (and You May Not Realize It)

Retcons are a core part of the comic book experience. With so many minds working on the characters across so many years, it’s only natural that the lore they, sometimes haphazardly, establish can be either constrictive or actually contradictory to the type of the stories the character can tell. Some retcons are beloved, like Alfred raising Bruce after his parents’ death, and some are hated, like the New 52 changes to Wonder Woman, and can also vary vastly in importance. Sometimes they’re almost immediately forgotten and ignored, and sometimes they fundamentally change everything about a character, even if the retcon itself is forgotten about. This is one of those incredibly important, easily forgotten retcons. Every “Crisis” in DC always shakes things up, and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! changed everything about DC forever, even if not many people talk about it.

What Is Zero Hour?

Zero Hour was a comic released about ten years about Crisis on Infinite Earths, specifically with the goal of fixing continuity errors left after the reboot. It was a story structured around retcons, from the good to the bad to the nonsensical. It eliminated the old Legion of Super-Heroes to introduce a version that could exist without Superboy and aged up the Justice Society of America, something that has been kept to this day. Whether it accomplished its goal of streamlining the DC continuity or only made it even more convoluted is complicated and open to plenty of interpretation, but at the end of the day I think that’s an answer in and of itself. Regardless, out of all the things that Zero Hour changed, many of them have since been reset or moved on from. However, there’s one absolutely massive change that is still instrumental to the core of the DC Universe to this day. 

Hawkman’s Origin Still Makes Zero Sense

Before Zero Hour, Hawkman was already a problem for the continuity of the DC Universe. There were two distinct heroes who both shared the name; the JSA’s retired Carter Hall who was a reincarnated Egyptian pharaoh, and the new Katar Hol who was a Thanagarian cop who fled to Earth. DC thought that having two completely unrelated heroes with identical hero names and practically identical secret identities was too confusing, and they took the opportunity Zero Hour presented to try and smooth out the rough edges with the two of them. Unfortunately, the retcon introduced for Hawkman is so wildly insane that it practically ruined the character and has left his entire corner of the DC Universe in chaos for decades.

Zero Hour decided to combine the two different Hawkmen, Hawkgirl, and all of the chrono-anomaly Hawkmen into one being with a shared history, and it makes no sense at all. Now not only did this new Hawman actively participate as an essential part of the JSA, but he was also a Thanagarian on the run and dealing with everything to do with Hawkworld. It was DC’s biggest case of trying to have its cake and eat it too, and the end result was a hero with a backstory more confusing than anything else DC had published because this new Hawkman’s history insisted that every Hawkman story published up until that point was a canonical part of his history, no matter how much this broke the timeline. Somehow this character was a member of the Justice Society while also living on Thanagar, and also was connected to Kendra, Shayra, and Shiera Hall, despite the fact that doing any two of these things would be impossible, let alone all of them. Ever since, numerous writers have tried to make some kind of sense of the nonsense that was Hawkman’s backstory, but even spectacular attempts can only do so much because of the sheer insanity of this still very canon story-beat.

I’m sure some of you are wondering why a confusing retcon involving Hawkman is so important, but the truth is that while Hawkman isn’t anywhere near as popular as he once was, he is still incredibly important to the timeline of the DC Universe. He is an essential part of the JSA, the hero team that serves as the inspiration for the modern day Justice League in current canon, and Hawkgirl is essential to the Justice League. Obviously, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are closely tied, and her origin was just as screwed as his with this change. Every time DC wants to do something with one of these teams, especially exploring their pasts, they are forced to handwave a lot with Hawkman, which can cause all kinds of problems, because if you focus too much on him the structure of the events’ timeline literally breaks apart at the seams. Hawkman is the living embodiment of the broken DC timescale, and until his origin is fixed he will continue to be a ticking time bomb of convulted, continuity-shattering insanity. And it all started with Zero Hour.