CHRISTOPHER IRVING: How would you describe HOURMAN?

TOM PEYER: Hourman is a two-year old android from the 853rd Century
(setting of the recent DC ONE MILLION miniseries) who walks away from
a high-stakes life of godly power and retreats to our comparatively
rustic era to figure out who he is and what he really wants.  His best
friend and mentor is Snapper Carr, an auto mechanic and unpublished
author who introduces the android to a subculture of beatniks, seekers
and slackers, drop-outs like Hourman himself, who could have amassed
political or financial power but chose instead to pursue wisdom,
freedom, love and identity.  As many DC Comics fans know, Snapper is
uniquely qualified to act as a bridge between humanity and super-
humanity, having spent his teen years as the Justice League of
America's human "mascot."
        Hourman is awkward in a small-scale human setting and completely in
control in a cosmic adventure setting... so it's the human setting
that interests him more.  We have a scene in #3 where he spends two
pages trying to master the simple task of ordering coffee at a lunch
counter, and he just never figures out how to do it, yet he can pull
off miraculous feats even Superman can't. He's super-strong and
super-fast and he can pass through an object by slipping between the
milliseconds of its existence.
         During his Power Hour, he commands a range of time-based powers.
The most prominent of these is Time Vision; he can shoot a hamburger
with eye-beams and it'll become a cow for up to 60 minutes.  He can
turn an eighty-year old woman into a teenager, or a tree into the
Sunday New York Times.
        That's Hourman the character.  HOURMAN the comic book might be the
best- looking monthly title you'll see launched in 1999.  Penciller
Rags Morales and inker David Meikis work like crazy, and it shows.
When writing for artists we haven't worked with before, writers can
get into the habit of over-describing scenes, figuring, "If I ask for
130% maybe I'll get 90%."  I learned quickly never to do that to Rags,
because he'll kill himself to give me everything and
make it work, and I want him to live.
        As for my end of it, it isn't bragging to say that I love this
character, because I didn't create him.  He was introduced by Grant
Morrison and Howard Porter in the JLA: ROCK OF AGES storyline (now in
paperback!), where we got a glimpse of how he operated in his
omnipotent days.   Grant got the idea to de- power him and throw him
in the deep end with beatniks; he and JLA editor Dan Raspler saw me as
the malcontent who might make it work.  Time will tell if they were
right, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the title that makes me
happiest.  The ideas just keep coming, and the characters are very
real to me.

CI: What type of tone are you trying to set for the book?

TP: An "anything-can-happen" tone, following the course laid out by
writers like Grant and Mark Waid in books like FLASH and JLA; an
appreciation of outlandish ideas made believable but not hobbled by
the demands of the grim and angry "realism" that overtook comics
nearly a decade and a half ago.  It's not a time-travel comic, but
there's a lot of time-travel in it; it tries to use time the way the
FLASH comic uses speed.  One of my favorite quotes is from R. Crumb's
Mr. Natural: "Minds were made to be blown."  That's our motto.
        There is also, I hope, a sweetness to it.  Hourman's main supporting
players -- Snapper and a new character named Bethany Lee -- are almost
comically open- minded and non-judgmental.  They're just the kind of
people an android needs to hang with if he's serious about joining the
human race.

CI:How is this new HOURMAN connected to the Golden Age character? Will
he meet the original?

TP:The late Rex "Tick Tock" Tyler, the first Hourman, used to take a
pill called Miraclo in order to gain super-strength, speed, etc.  Our
new Hourman's genetic software is patterned after the original
Hourman's Miraclo-enhanced DNA when enhanced by Miraclo, the chemical
that gave him his super-powers; that makes him the first Hourman's
descendant.  There's a lot of ancestor worship in this comic, and a
lot of jumping around in time, so the two Hourmen are bound to meet
eventually.   In HOURMAN #5, we'll see what happens when our Hourman
takes a Miraclo pill.

CI:Did you reference loads of early HOURMAN and JSA for this book?

TP:Editor Tony Bedard went above and beyond the call of duty, as he is
known to do, and photocopied and sent to me what must be every 1940s
Hourman story from ADVENTURE COMICS, plus the two team-ups with Dr.
Fate that ran in SHOWCASE in the 1960s.  No shortage of inspiration
there.  The ADVENTURE stories are loaded with Golden Age charm... kid
sidekicks by the carload,  mad scientists and their monsters.
        What struck me most is that early on Rex "Tick Tock" Tyler was a
timid soul, and his Miraclo pills not only turned him into the
super-powered Hourman but they also lowered his inhibitions, made him
braver and more outgoing.  A lot of comic potential there, like David
Spade taking a pill and turning into Chris Farley, or Dan Aykroyd into
John Belushi.  I imagine Hourman must have done a few things that Rex
Tyler regretted in the morning; maybe he flirted a little with the
mayor's stodgy wife, or got a little belligerent with the chief of
detectives.  Nothing too terrible; he is a hero after all.
        There's a parallel with our Hourman, who's also trying to come out of
a shell, although his is more naiveté than shyness.  And both are
concerned with changing and improving themselves, and the risks of
self-invention taken in the wrong direction.

CI:What plans do you have for the future for HOURMAN?

TP:He'll meet up with early-model androids Amazo and Tomorrow Woman,
both from JLA.    He'll get trapped in the Timepoint, a prison that's
actually an endlessly-recurring fragment of one of the worst days in
American history. He'll meet his older self from the far distant
future.  He'll take that Miraclo pill I mentioned.  He'll get involved
with the family Rex Tyler left behind.  He'll fall in love.  He'll get
in trouble with the law.  He'll contract something called the Midas
Touch of Time.  He'll fight the JLAndroids, whatever they are, as well
as Epoch, Lord of Time (from
JLA/WILDC.A.T.S.) and some Golden Age villains who fought the first
Hourman.
        He'll visit a future planet populated by mass-produced copies of
himself. He'll bring techno-fascism to America, or part of it, anyway.
 At least four of these stories all happen to him on one day, and he's
pretty exhausted by the end of it.

CI:Will we see Rick Tyler?

TP: Yes, the second Hourman -- ours is the third -- will be seen
somewhere around HOURMAN #7 or #8.  His mother, Rex Tyler's widow,
will also be showing up; she hasn't popped up in a while.

CI:Recently, DC's newest books like CHASE, CHRONOS and CREEPER have
been canceled before a year's up. Do you worry that this'll happen to
HOURMAN?

TP: I hope Hourman's JLA and DC ONE MILLION connections get readers to
give it a look; after that, it's up to us to hold them.  I'm
confident, but as we've seen in this market, sometimes you do your
best and it's not enough.  That's a risk we always take.  As long as
you give it the effort you have nothing to be ashamed of.  I'd like to
keep writing HOURMAN, though, so I hope the fans check us out.