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HYPERTIME 1,000,000

by Cecil Adkins

I was two weeks late getting the recent DC One Million 80-Page Giant, and I wish I could say it was worth the wait. When a friend told me there were a lot of Hypertime references in the book, I was pretty excited. What I saw when I read the stories disappointed me greatly.

There were a few good bits, and half of the stories did mention Hypertime or something related to Hypertime. In the order of the references...

"System's Finest"

One of Superman 1M's descendants contacts him with an urgent message and mentions "Hunter's Law of Time." This appears to be a sort of temporal "Prime Directive" named after one of the incarnations of Rip Hunter (see Adam Arnold's discussions of the changes Rip Hunter's gone through over the years by clicking here). Presumably, a person from the future is forbidden to divulge specific information about their era to someone in their past.

A side note: Is it just me, or did Batman 1M's nemesis, Pico-Moth, look just like Hornet from Marvel's ill-fated Slingers series? Is Hypertime causing random DC/Marvel crossovers?

"Tales of the Legion of Executive Familiars"

Probably the most significant Hypertime story in the book, due to one panel. In telling the origins of the Legion of Super-Familiars, Krypto-9 says that the story really started "when the legendary super-pets, and my distant ancestor, Krypto, supposedly patrolled the skies of Earth."

The word "supposedly" might mean the Krypto is simply unsure of the truth of this story. But we know that there never were such creatures as Krypto the Super-Dog, Streaky the Super-Cat, or Comet the Super-Horse. . . after CRISIS. Since the story of these super-animals has somehow survived, I think it may be evidence of divergent Hypertimelines mingling sometime between the 20th century and the 853rd.

"The Divided Self"

This story concerns a universe being "eaten" by the "mainstream" DC 1M universe. While not necessarily a "pure" Hypertime reference, it does deal with alternate realities of sorts. I do wonder about the Universal Gate where Superman Prime greets the Atom from the destroyed universe. Has this ever been mentioned before?

"Crisis One Million"

The Gorilla Galaxy (a name which alludes to Grant Morrison's love for the Silver Age) and the Milky Way are on a collision course, causing "weird chronal malformations" in the Milky Way. As planar time starts to fold, "all of Hypertime is folding together. . . every parallel path existing simultaneously in the here and now."

What follows is a brawl between DCU characters from Kingdom Come, Batman Beyond, the Super Friends, the Tangent Universe, and more. Considering that this story seems like an excuse to just get a bunch of alternate versions of DC characters together for a big fight, I'd say this is a perfect example of the type of misuse of Hypertime that a lot of people were worried about. It's a shame that Morrison's first real Hypertime story had to be this one...