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Underground > Comic Books >

Whatever Happened To Hypertime?

miss wonderstarr

11:06 / 17.04.04

I kind of gave up on the DCU in 2000, just after Hypertime broke at the end of The Kingdom. My impression was that this device was going to bring back all the fun, embarrassing, campy sci-fi experiment across the multiverse that the CRISIS had censored outta existence.

four years later!

I find nothing seems to have been done with this world-breaking invention.

Other than the Superboy: Hypertension story, there hasn't been a single extended storyline featuring Hypertime. Mark Waid's final Flash story used Hypertime, but you didn't really know it until the very last installment. And other than that, all you have is a couple of lines in scattered issues of the soon-to-be cancelled Hourman series.

Perhaps worst of all, there was supposed to have been a huge revelation this year concerning Hypertime - one which would make the "merging timelines" aspect of the concept seem a minor part of the whole thing. Sadly, that isn't going to happen from the looks of things.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/hypertime2000/features/history.html
(I will study up on doing your proper html links shortly.)

Is this like...a real embarassment in the DCU? You introduce something that changes major continuity rules for the first time in 15 years, and nobody even uses it?

The Golden Age Superman can team up with the Silver Age again. You can have crises on multiple earths again. Ace the Bat-hound can crossover with Krypto. And everyone's just ignoring the fact that the universe rules changed?

So, where does Hypertime go from here? With its chief architects fleeing DC's ranks, with Hourman - a series purportedly about the "master of Hypertime" - ending, and with fan discussion dying down, does this mean it's the end of the road for Hypertime?

Maybe, but I doubt it. The concept was always meant to be in the background - if it wasn't, then all of those bad predictions would have come true. I see Hypertime popping up every so often, until a talented, trusted writer comes up with a big Hypertime story that'll blow everyone away.

Yuh-huh! and I doubt that very much!

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

12:02 / 17.04.04

I remember soon after Hypertime was unveiled, there was a lot of talk that it wouldn't be used as a story point much, just as a way to slear up any big continuity problems. Superman recently used it in it's "Return to Krypton" stories, since there really wasn't any other way to explqain them, but for the most part, the problem with the concept is that it is very continuity focused, and therefor makes it for only the hardest of hardcore fans.

miss wonderstarr

12:26 / 17.04.04

the problem with the concept is that it is very continuity focused, and therefor makes it for only the hardest of hardcore fans.

The multiverse was continuity focused, and there were loads of mainstream stories making use of it during the Silver Age. I don't think you need to be hardcore to enjoy intelligent stories about one universe visiting another. Every "Elseworld" was a kind of hypertime tale, retrospectively anyway.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:35 / 17.04.04

I agree you don't need to be hardcore to enjoy multiverse stories, but you DO need to be hardcore to care about what happened to Bathound or the homeless man living in the Batcave, which were recent plot points in the Big Jim Lee Batman story. But that's a snarky side note.

Hypertime seems to me like a nice way of saying that if you want a story to have happened, it did, and if you don't want it to have happened, it didn't, freeing us from the Roy Thomas style of story where you have to explain in detail what ever happened to BatWoman or why Ma Hunkle is still alive after being in her 40's during WWII. It looks like Hypertime is beign used with the new Supergirl, since she seems like that Kara from Superman/Aliens, but for the most part, using it for multiverse crossovers muddies the waters too much.

I think the good thing about Hypertime is that so few people understand it, that it won't get overused, like in the late 80's when EVERY Character who didn't have a creative team with a decent idea became an "elemental" like Swamp Thing, leading to such stupidity as Captain Atom becoming a "Quantum Elemental" and Red Tornado being a "Wind Elemental."

23:27 / 18.04.04

I love the idea of Hypertime, but sadly no one either gives a shit or can come up with any worthwild stories. I'm guessing that the Waid/Peyer/Morrison/Millar Superman relaunch would have delt in some way with it.
I remember Grant saying in an interview that he would have liked to do a Challengers of the Unknown book called Masters of the Unknown, with the team petroling Hypertime. I think that would have been amazing.

00:40 / 19.04.04

I like to think of Hypertime as a big fun background that can be considered and used to publish elsewords but never f-ked around with.

Hypertime, everystory happened from Elseworlds to that fan fiction you wrote about Batman being Sherlock Holmes and Superman his Watson under a red sun.

Hypertime is an infinite array of universes continually expanding, containing even minor differences like the position of a single atom seperating realities.

That's my view of Hypertime.

11:06 / 19.04.04

Andrew:

Actually, Grant said he was going to call it "Challengers: Beyond the Unknown", which sounds even cooler.

13:51 / 19.04.04

Good call - this thing Grant & Mark Waid "invented" was pretty fun. Although I've gotten the feeling that Grant's upcoming, much-talked-about "big DCU project with Frank Quietly," which will probably happen in about a year, may use Hypertime, though Grant's never specifically said so in interviews...

08:10 / 20.04.04

He's said the opposite. He's stated on a few different occasions, one of which I was present for, that Hypertime's dead and gone and will not feature into his DCU work. The World Was Not Prepared For Hypertime - Human minds are too fragile, too frail to know it.

But he's been proven a dirty bastard baby-murdering liar before.

01:12 / 22.04.04

Thanks for that Mario. That is a much cooler title. I've tried to imagine that book so many times in my head.