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Colección Universo DC
Universo DC: Hourman
Contiene JLA in Crisis Secret Files Hourman #1-25.
Hourman es un androide construido en un futuro remoto a partir del código genético de un justiciero legendario. Después de un tortuoso viaje por el tiempo, se ha quedado en nuestra era para codearse con los héroes más poderosos del mundo. Sin embargo, a su vida artificial le falta algo: más humanidad. Acompaña a este personaje creado por Grant Morrison y a sus nuevos amigos en las fascinantes aventuras en solitario que realizaron Tom Peyer y Rags Morales (Crisis de identidad) para los 25 episodios de su serie mensual.
Hourman es un androide construido en un futuro remoto a partir del código genético de un justiciero legendario. Después de un tortuoso viaje por el tiempo, se ha quedado en nuestra era para codearse con los héroes más poderosos del mundo. Sin embargo, a su vida artificial le falta algo: más humanidad. Acompaña a este personaje creado por Grant Morrison y a sus nuevos amigos en las fascinantes aventuras en solitario que realizaron Tom Peyer y Rags Morales (Crisis de identidad) para los 25 episodios de su serie mensual.
608 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Tom Peyer
639 books18 followersTom Peyer is an American comic book creator and editor.
He is known for his 1999 revisioning of Golden Age super-hero Hourman, as well as his work on the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 1990s. An editor at DC Comics/Vertigo from 1987 to 1993, he served as assistant editor on Neil Gaiman's groundbreaking Sandman. Peyer has also worked for Marvel Comics, Wildstorm, and Bongo Comics. With John Layman, he wrote the 2007–2009 Tek Jansen comic book, based on the Stephen Colbert character.
He is known for his 1999 revisioning of Golden Age super-hero Hourman, as well as his work on the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 1990s. An editor at DC Comics/Vertigo from 1987 to 1993, he served as assistant editor on Neil Gaiman's groundbreaking Sandman. Peyer has also worked for Marvel Comics, Wildstorm, and Bongo Comics. With John Layman, he wrote the 2007–2009 Tek Jansen comic book, based on the Stephen Colbert character.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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May 30, 2020No, I didn't read it in Spanish, but that's the only way it seems to have been collected. Indeed, most of it still wasn't on Comixology last time I checked, so I had to go old-school and buy the whole physical wodge of it from eBay*. This inaccessibility (well, unless one makes a bit of an effort and has a little luck) is all the more frustrating when you consider that 1980s-90s DC had probably the highest overall quality either big superhero publisher has ever managed, and this run in particular spun out from the one Justice League run ever to surpass even Giffen & deMatteis, and specifically the best comics crossover ever, Grant Morrison's far-future DC One Million. Not that Morrison wrote the Hourman series himself; he handed that over to longtime co-conspirator Tom Peyer, a bunch of whose recent Ahoy stuff I've been reading lately, which was what spurred me to finally get hold of this. The art is mostly by Rags Morales, and it's...well, it's fine. I think really getting into comics around this point is part of why I've always been more about the writing than the art, though, and the muddy colouring really doesn't help, offering neither the plain pop of older comics nor the more hi-tech modern style.
So: Hourman. A legacy hero, back when DC still had those as a cornerstone, back before Geoff Johns decided to revert everyone to the characters he'd grown up on, forever. Some of the legacy heroes were quite direct successors: whichever generation of the Flash you're talking about, it's always going to be someone who runs really fast. Others were a little more lateral: the Golden Age version of the Atom was just a guy who was quite short, and punched stuff, whereas the Silver Age bearer of the name had full-on shrinking powers. Hourman is the latter, and then some. Rex Tyler, the original Hourman, took a 'Miraclo' pill which made him really strong for an hour, but also tended to mess with his moods. In other words, he's not so much a superhero as a man with a PCP habit and a cloak. The nineties version, on the other hand, tends to introduce himself as "an intelligent machine colony from the year 85,291, powered by Tyler Miraclo geneware". There are two main angles here, then: that old chestnut about a robot learning to be human, intertwined with a time travel series. In order to stop things getting entirely out of hand, and enable some degree of jeopardy, the series opens with Hourman voluntarily depowering himself, giving up the Worlogog which makes time and space his plaything, and only becoming able to access his full time-manipulation powers for an hour at a time. It makes sense to limit his power and ominiscience, because as TV Watchmen's faltering treatment of Dr Manhattan showed, it's very hard to meaningfully portray someone who can see all of time at once unless you are in fact Alan Moore (who would of course return to that theme, somewhat less accessibly, in his mammoth Jerusalem). But equally, for the character the decision to do so doesn't really make a great deal of sense, and I don't just say that because I never understand any story in which people give up their cool stuff to become less, whether that be The Tempest or the godawful finale of Battlestar Galactica. No, here it's part of a wider problem: Peyer is good at depicting and exploring states, but certainly at this point in his career, he's not got the hang of transitions yet, meaning the story and even more so the characters' motivations can tend to pinwheel from one scene to another without ever quite selling what's changed to make it so. To an extent, having a two-year-old robot as the lead does provide some excuses there - but equally, it begs questions about why the future would let robots so naive and emotionally incontinent out unsupervised, never mind why Metron would give one awesome time powers.
Set against which, it's fortunate that the components themselves are mostly pretty good. Yeah, sometimes we get scenes which haven't aged well, like the younger male heroes' locker-room vibe when Hourman asks Batman for dating tips, or indeed the whole idea of asking Batman for dating tips. In fairness, even within that scene there is Huntress to be suitably unimpressed at everyone's behaviour. And it's not like Hourman is being taught by the aggregate wisdom of humanity (not that that'd do much better, when you look at the mess we've made of the place). No, his guide to human life is Snapper Carr, who's every bit the mess you'd expect of a disgraced former kid sidekick who briefly became a D-list superhero himself but doesn't like to talk about it. The supporting cast does widen a little, even turning at points to a PG-rated version of the crew down the bar in the contemporaneous Hitman – Hell, they even have a former demon here too. But in part because the series didn't run as long, and in part because Peyer is no Ennis, they never quite feel as solid or rounded. Still, a lot of the best bits are the ones which feel most like they're examining very human material through the lens of a bonkers superhero world in full flower. Sometimes it can even feel weirdly ahead of its time, as in the plot where Hourman's more confident future self threatens to nick his girlfriend, or the creepy detective-stalker assessing women's potential as "mates", both of whom feel like satires on an incel movement that didn't even exist yet. But among the more straightforwardly superheroic elements, as well as marvellously strange little details like Hourman's Century of Solitude, it makes perfect sense to use Amazo as the arch-nemesis. After all, he's a robot too, and his old MO was nicking superpowers from the heroes, so it only needs a little tweak for him instead to steal the humanity from the JLA - because humanity is a superpower, aaaah? Except that's really not the direction the story goes with it, and where it does end up, oh boy that feels timely. Though not half so much as the notion of the Timepoint, a dreadful weaponised Groundhog Day except worse, because it uses Dallas the instant after the JFK assassination, but fuck me it feels a lot like here and now: "I trapped him in that horrible, hopeless, endlessly repeating moment..."
Is it a classic? No. Is it a shame that a time travel series born from the minds of Morrison and Peyer didn't make more use of Hypertime, the great lost DC concept? Absolutely. Is it a better read, and way more deserving of an easily obtained English collection, than any new DC superhero comic I've read since Conner and Palmiotti came off Harley Quinn (which was itself a last lonely outlier)? Damn straight.
*Not necessarily a bad thing – you get the ads this way, and the ads in old comics are a goldmine. Back then they weren't just for other comics and films from the same firm, so you'd get all these exotic drinks and cereals and sweets we never even got the opportunity to try over here. Computer games, the claims for whose incredible graphics only get more entertaining the further away from them time moves. Anti-drugs campaigns desperately trying to be cool. A weirdly prescient Zelda ad in the first issue of 2001, with a moon about to crush the Twin Towers. Even, in one of these, a whole glossy fashion insert, illustrated by of all people Paul Pope, one of the least glossy artists in mainstream comics.
So: Hourman. A legacy hero, back when DC still had those as a cornerstone, back before Geoff Johns decided to revert everyone to the characters he'd grown up on, forever. Some of the legacy heroes were quite direct successors: whichever generation of the Flash you're talking about, it's always going to be someone who runs really fast. Others were a little more lateral: the Golden Age version of the Atom was just a guy who was quite short, and punched stuff, whereas the Silver Age bearer of the name had full-on shrinking powers. Hourman is the latter, and then some. Rex Tyler, the original Hourman, took a 'Miraclo' pill which made him really strong for an hour, but also tended to mess with his moods. In other words, he's not so much a superhero as a man with a PCP habit and a cloak. The nineties version, on the other hand, tends to introduce himself as "an intelligent machine colony from the year 85,291, powered by Tyler Miraclo geneware". There are two main angles here, then: that old chestnut about a robot learning to be human, intertwined with a time travel series. In order to stop things getting entirely out of hand, and enable some degree of jeopardy, the series opens with Hourman voluntarily depowering himself, giving up the Worlogog which makes time and space his plaything, and only becoming able to access his full time-manipulation powers for an hour at a time. It makes sense to limit his power and ominiscience, because as TV Watchmen's faltering treatment of Dr Manhattan showed, it's very hard to meaningfully portray someone who can see all of time at once unless you are in fact Alan Moore (who would of course return to that theme, somewhat less accessibly, in his mammoth Jerusalem). But equally, for the character the decision to do so doesn't really make a great deal of sense, and I don't just say that because I never understand any story in which people give up their cool stuff to become less, whether that be The Tempest or the godawful finale of Battlestar Galactica. No, here it's part of a wider problem: Peyer is good at depicting and exploring states, but certainly at this point in his career, he's not got the hang of transitions yet, meaning the story and even more so the characters' motivations can tend to pinwheel from one scene to another without ever quite selling what's changed to make it so. To an extent, having a two-year-old robot as the lead does provide some excuses there - but equally, it begs questions about why the future would let robots so naive and emotionally incontinent out unsupervised, never mind why Metron would give one awesome time powers.
Set against which, it's fortunate that the components themselves are mostly pretty good. Yeah, sometimes we get scenes which haven't aged well, like the younger male heroes' locker-room vibe when Hourman asks Batman for dating tips, or indeed the whole idea of asking Batman for dating tips. In fairness, even within that scene there is Huntress to be suitably unimpressed at everyone's behaviour. And it's not like Hourman is being taught by the aggregate wisdom of humanity (not that that'd do much better, when you look at the mess we've made of the place). No, his guide to human life is Snapper Carr, who's every bit the mess you'd expect of a disgraced former kid sidekick who briefly became a D-list superhero himself but doesn't like to talk about it. The supporting cast does widen a little, even turning at points to a PG-rated version of the crew down the bar in the contemporaneous Hitman – Hell, they even have a former demon here too. But in part because the series didn't run as long, and in part because Peyer is no Ennis, they never quite feel as solid or rounded. Still, a lot of the best bits are the ones which feel most like they're examining very human material through the lens of a bonkers superhero world in full flower. Sometimes it can even feel weirdly ahead of its time, as in the plot where Hourman's more confident future self threatens to nick his girlfriend, or the creepy detective-stalker assessing women's potential as "mates", both of whom feel like satires on an incel movement that didn't even exist yet. But among the more straightforwardly superheroic elements, as well as marvellously strange little details like Hourman's Century of Solitude, it makes perfect sense to use Amazo as the arch-nemesis. After all, he's a robot too, and his old MO was nicking superpowers from the heroes, so it only needs a little tweak for him instead to steal the humanity from the JLA - because humanity is a superpower, aaaah? Except that's really not the direction the story goes with it, and where it does end up, oh boy that feels timely. Though not half so much as the notion of the Timepoint, a dreadful weaponised Groundhog Day except worse, because it uses Dallas the instant after the JFK assassination, but fuck me it feels a lot like here and now: "I trapped him in that horrible, hopeless, endlessly repeating moment..."
Is it a classic? No. Is it a shame that a time travel series born from the minds of Morrison and Peyer didn't make more use of Hypertime, the great lost DC concept? Absolutely. Is it a better read, and way more deserving of an easily obtained English collection, than any new DC superhero comic I've read since Conner and Palmiotti came off Harley Quinn (which was itself a last lonely outlier)? Damn straight.
*Not necessarily a bad thing – you get the ads this way, and the ads in old comics are a goldmine. Back then they weren't just for other comics and films from the same firm, so you'd get all these exotic drinks and cereals and sweets we never even got the opportunity to try over here. Computer games, the claims for whose incredible graphics only get more entertaining the further away from them time moves. Anti-drugs campaigns desperately trying to be cool. A weirdly prescient Zelda ad in the first issue of 2001, with a moon about to crush the Twin Towers. Even, in one of these, a whole glossy fashion insert, illustrated by of all people Paul Pope, one of the least glossy artists in mainstream comics.
May 16, 2022
I read the English version with individual issues, This was a cute little series that apparently flew under the radar but for me I really do seem to enjoy the late '90s versions of JSA characters, this one deals with Matthew Tyler an Android from the 853rd century who comes back to our time (1999) and teams up with Snapper Carr, it's a really funny series that I highly recommend and look only 26 issues
January 3, 2021
One of my favorite superhero stories. Similar to Sharman.
August 2, 2025
Los 25 issues de la serie regular de HOURMAN salido de las páginas de DC ONE MILLION más el SF&O dedicado al personaje.
March 16, 2012
Aunque flojee en varias partes y se note un final no abrupto pero sí algo forzado, de los 26 números que traen este tomote al menos 23 ó 24 me parecieron de lo más disfrutables. Como el protagonista tiene poderes temporales, hay peleas e incluso sagas enteras que sacan mucho provecho a sus habilidades y un par en las que se nota que podrían haber logrado algo más. Como sea, me pareció tan entretenido que durante los dos días y pico que me duró su lectura, no lo intercalé con ningún otro libro. Después tengo que chusmear qué otra cosa interesante hizo este señor Peyote...
August 8, 2014
L'intera serie DC dedicata all'Hourman robotico che verrà costruito tra 1 milione di mesi.
Onestamente posso dire di non averla gradita più di tanto. In primo luogo ho trovato non soddisfacenti i disegni, in secondo luogo le storie non avevano quella verve che mi attendevo avendo un forte richiamo sia alla JSA di Robinson sia all'universo del Cross-over 1 Million.
Certo, non è un peccato o una perdita di tempo, ma lascia l'amaro in bocca in quanto è chiaramente una occasione sprecata.
Onestamente posso dire di non averla gradita più di tanto. In primo luogo ho trovato non soddisfacenti i disegni, in secondo luogo le storie non avevano quella verve che mi attendevo avendo un forte richiamo sia alla JSA di Robinson sia all'universo del Cross-over 1 Million.
Certo, non è un peccato o una perdita di tempo, ma lascia l'amaro in bocca in quanto è chiaramente una occasione sprecata.
Want to Read
March 13, 2015Edición integral con la serie commpleta de Hourman, en su versión de One Million.
March 26, 2015
Uno de los grandes ignorados de los 90s en edición integral, ideal para indecisos.
Contiene JLA in Crisis Secret Files Hourman #1-25, para leer a toda hora, cualquier man.
Contiene JLA in Crisis Secret Files Hourman #1-25, para leer a toda hora, cualquier man.
September 18, 2015
Well, since this doesn't seem to be listed in English...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews