DC Promises Universe-Changing Story “30 Years in the Making” This Free Comic Book Day

The solicitation text for DC’s upcoming Free Comic Book Day one-shot has dropped, and like virtually every Marvel or DC event book before it, the publisher is promising a “major event” that will change the universe forever. It’s hard to know what exactly that means — after all, DC has had “world-changing” events that literally reshape the multiverse, and “world-changing” events that set a new lineup for the Teen Titans. In this case, though, DC is teasing a story “30 years in the making.” That could call back to 1994’s Zero Hour event, and by extension could lead to something that leans a lot more on the “universe-altering” side than the “cool line of books for six months” side.

Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time was DC’s first attempt to use an event story to “fix” some of the dangling plot threads left behind by Crisis on Infinite Earths. While the ’80s miniseries obliterated DC’s multiverse and left all of DC’s heroes on the same world and in the same timeline, the ’90s follow-up revisited some popular characters who were out of commission (like Batgirl and Superboy), as well as showing fans a glimpse of some potential alternate timelines, which were then erased at the end of the crossover.

Zero Hour was written and drawn by Dan Jurgens. The Booster Gold creator was writing and drawing Superman at the time, which made Zero Hour an almost singular challenge in the world of modern comics. The story was published weekly, releasing in reverse order from #4 to #0 over the course of a five-week month. Jurgens wrote and drew all four issues (with Jerry Ordway on inks, which tied it nicely to Crisis on Infinite Earths).

While Zero Hour has been republished in a deluxe hardcover edition, the miniseries has never been as celebrated by DC as has Crisis. Still, it’s worth noting that the modern era of DC, with multiversal storytelling and rolling reboots dominating so many of its big events, all flowed out of Infinite Crisis, a series published to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths. They revisited the idea again when Crisis hit 30 with Convergence, which ended The New 52 in the same way Crisis ended the original multiverse. 

“In away, projects like that are necessary every few years,” Jurgens told ComicBook.com in 2012. “Comic universes can be a bit like a closet that you continue to throw stuff in. Every so often you have to open the door, take a deep breath and wade into it, deciding what to keep and what to discard.”

A potential Zero Hour sequel, then, would be a good way to generate some buzz — and give the word “Crisis,” which has been reused half a dozen times in big events since 2005, a rest.

Here’s the actual text of the solicitation, via ScreenRant, who first really ran with the Zero Hour theory:

The prelude to the biggest DC Comics event of 2024 is here! It’s a story 30 years in the making… and in this special Free Comic Book Day tale, the final domino to fall in an epic scheme comes tumbling down, and the DC Universe will never be the same. More details coming soon!