Zero Hour: Crisis in Time - Aftermath

Aftermath

DC published a fold-out timeline inside the back cover of Zero Hour #0 which identified various events and key stories which were part of its newly singular timeline, and when they occurred. Although fixed dates were given for the debut of historical characters such as the JSA, the debut of the post-Crisis Superman was presented as "10 years ago" and subsequent dates were expressed the same way, suggesting that the calendar years of these events were fluid and relative to the present rather than fixed, as a way to keep the characters at roughly their present ages.

The Legion of Super-Heroes continuity was completely rebooted following Zero Hour, and the various Hawkman characters were merged into one (even though, contrary to the storyline's purpose, this created new sets of contradictions and confusions). Each ongoing series at the time was given an opportunity to retell (or clarify) the origin of its hero(es) to establish the official version in this revised continuity, in a "#0" issue published in the subsequent weeks after Zero Hour. They resumed their previous numbering or went on to #1, for new series, the following month. Several series took new directions following Zero Hour; for example, new teams were formed in the Justice League books, Oliver Queen's son Connor Hawke was introduced in Green Arrow, and Guy "Warrior" Gardner discovered an alien heritage which gave him different powers.

A major part of Batman's origin was retconned after the events in Zero Hour. In this version, Batman never caught or confronted the killer of his parents (thus rendering Batman: Year Two non-canonical), and more importantly, Batman was thought of as being an urban legend. Also, Catwoman was not a prostitute, but rather lived in the low rentals area of Gotham. Finally, contributing to a plot point not fully explored in Batman: Year Three, Dick Grayson was legally adopted by Wayne.

But this "warm reboot" did not solve all continuity matters and in fact actually created other continuity problems— the fold-out timeline included Armageddon a story that required the supposedly eliminated alternate timelines to even work, Matrix Supergirl who required an artificially created alternate timeline still existed, and "Who is Hawkman?" actually became less clear. For those and other reasons, DC later introduced a variation of the pre-Crisis concept of the Multiverse, in the form of Hypertime. In the end, this more ecumenical solution did not satisfy DC editors either, inevitably leading to the Infinite Crisis event in 2005, which revived and brought back several pre-Crisis concepts.

Zero Hour also served to launch or end several ongoing series. A few of these were dictated by the changes in continuity that came out of the story, but most happened simply because it provided a convenient marketing opportunity to start new series. However, each of the new series (save for Starman) were canceled after a couple of years, due to poor sales. The critical success of Starman was a turning point for DC's editors and how they viewed DC's Golden Age characters and their ongoing story potential, starting a trend reflected in a small family of books set in the present but reflective of the past, such as Starman's successor title, JSA.