Saturday, March 04, 2006
Comic Art
Sometimes you are looking through comic books and you see a character and you know nothing about him/her, but you instantly decide this may be the coolest yet. That was the experience I had when I first encountered - sometime in junior high - Hourman.There is something remarkably intriguing about the design of the hood/cowl/mask that truly caught my imagination. He was about as dull as a superphero could get. A chemist (perhaps a personal inspriation, I don't know) Rex Tyler invented miraclo - a pill he could take but once day that made him faster, stronger and all that other cool superpower stuff. Which made him sort of like Batman that could turn into Superman for an hour. Unfortunately he did neither very well, but just because of that great look, I read everything I could get my hands on.
As with all the JSA, there is a generational element to the story. Rex soon retired from the superhero gig, but after a while the mantle was taken up by his son Rick - orginially in the extremely lame purple and red.But in what may turn out to be one of the most inspired storytellings ever, Rick ended up addicted to miraclo and after much pathos had to hang it up. But like all great comic characters, Rick eventually conquered his addicition and returned, this time outfitted like his father, save for the yellow and black color reversal. Now we had a great character on our hands. Rick may be the best thing in the current JSA, though they need to give the addicton thing a break every now and then.
There is a third generation for the Hourman family - sort of. In overcoming his addiction, Rick gained the ability to, on occassion, see into the future. Inspried by this time-spanning capability, a third Hourman was built - he is a robot/android/artifical life form - in the distant future and he is a master of time. Given the generational nature of JSA stories. Hourman III is a very useful character indeed, making time travelling easy and convenient, and not quite the mystery it might otherwise be.Unique for an android, he has also developed genuine affection for his human predecessors, which given that Rex is currently trapped in some time nexus, makes for some really interesting interpersonal stuff.
Hourman is a character that has always had the look, but it is only in recent time that they have developed a legend truly worth of the look. He is a classic and rapidly becoming a great.
Related Tags: comics, comic books, superheroes, Hourman, Justice Society of America, JSA
