Fictional character biography
In his original incarnation, Rip Hunter is portrayed as an ordinary man who uses his invention, the Time Sphere, to travel through time.[3] Aided by his friend Jeff Smith, girlfriend Bonnie Baxter, and Bonnie's younger brother Corky, they have adventures in time. These stories were told in the series Rip Hunter...Time Master which ran for 29 issues between 1961 and 1965.[4]
Rip is next seen in the series Challengers of the Unknown, where, in the year AD 12,000,000, he assists the Challengers of the Unknown, Swamp Thing, and Deadman in defeating the dictatorial Sun Lords.[5] The character's next major appearance is in Action Comics #552–554. With the aid of Superman and the Forgotten Heroes, he prevents an alien invasion of Earth.[6]
The Forgotten Heroes are then seen in the 1985 series Crisis on Infinite Earths, a mini-series intended to change the fictional universe shared by DC characters. During this story, Hunter enables the superheroes of the multiverse to travel to the dawn of time, where they face off against the Anti-Monitor. The multiverse is destroyed in the ensuing battle, with the remaining universes being merged into one. Hunter then reunites with some of his Forgotten Heroes teammates, as well as cosmic heroes Adam Strange and Captain Comet in a quest to defeat the Anti-Monitor once and for all. With the help of Brainiac, they journey to Apokolips, where Darkseid uses his advanced science to peer into the Anti-Matter universe and aid Alex Luthor, Superman, and Superboy-Prime in the ultimate destruction of the Anti-Monitor.[7] This narrative event allowed the writing staff of DC Comics to alter many of their heroes and fictional situations.
The version of Rip Hunter native to this new universe is also a master of time travel, and aids heroes Booster Gold and Animal Man in their own time-traveling adventures before taking on the vast Illuminati conspiracy during the eight-issue series Time Masters. This more gritty and realistic (symbolized by jeans and a T-shirt rather than a costume) take on the character attempts to change the past to prevent the Illuminati, led by Vandal Savage, from coming into existence. During the series, a relative of the character known as Dan Hunter decides to stay in the past at the time of the Revolutionary War. This is used to create a link between Rip and the pre-existing western themed Dan Hunter, a character associated with Tomahawk. This series concludes with Hunter being stranded in the prehistoric past.[8]
Rip is then depicted as attracting the attention of the Linear Men with his clumsy exploration of time.[9] To protect Hunter and the integrity of history, the Linear Men recruit him into their ranks and the writers altered the appearance of Rip, using the stress of time travel as an explanation for those changes. Now, with white hair and bionic implants, he is seen in several series that involve time, or the manipulation of time as an element of the narrative—most notably during the Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! mini-series and event.
In The Kingdom, Hunter turns on the other Linear Men, who believe that time follows a single course of events, and joins forces with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Rip also joins forces with young heroes from the future, to stop the time-traveling villain Gog in his efforts to destroy Kansas twenty years ahead of schedule. As a result of this battle, Hunter finally breaks down the barrier to Hypertime, revealing that the Linear Men are wrong about the non-existence of alternate timelines in the post-Crisis universe. Rip also reveals that the timeline of the Kingdom can exist, regardless of what happens in the present.[10]
Shortly thereafter, the Linear Men, including the original character of Hunter, are destroyed during Imperiex's onslaught.[11] Although their consciousnesses survive, and they eventually construct new bodies for themselves, they have been driven insane by the experience. The Quintessence, a group of cosmic beings who counsel one another, disband the Linear Men, and Hunter vanishes in a whirlwind.[12]
In the Chronos series, starring Walker Gabriel, an alternate version of Gabriel, experimenting with time travel to avert World War III, mentions a horrible accident suffered by a Commander Hunter, who apparently scattered himself across time, with only "bits of flesh and bone" which kept resynchronizing in the lab.
Rip's next major appearance is within the page of 2004's Justice Society of America, where he takes members of the modern day Justice Society of America back in time to fight the villainous Per Degaton.[13] Once again, Rip serves as a device that allows for time-travel, and for other heroes to do so. This version of the character returns to a sci-fi influenced costume and the use of a time bubble. The ramifications of being a time-traveler are explored by writer Geoff Johns, who turns the name Rip Hunter into an alias. This is explained as being part of an attempt by the character to hide all of the details of his history, lest an enemy travel back in time and kill him as a child.
52
The themes of time and changes to the timeline are next explored in the weekly series 52. Following up from events in the Infinite Crisis mini-series, Booster Gold tries to contact Hunter. Booster discovers his base of operations in a time-locked concrete bunker in the Arizona desert, but when he finally manages to enter the bunker, he finds only a blackboard, a globe, and some pieces of paper filled with writings about the future. These papers had references to facts and events like the mortality of Vandal Savage, the last Lazarus Pit of Nyssa Raatko, and the appearances of the mysterious Supernova. The purpose of the blackboard was to provide clues for the readers of upcoming storylines within that series and other DC Universe titles.
As this series progresses, more and more time-traveling characters, such as Waverider are killed by a mysterious figure who is later revealed to be Booster Gold's robot companion Skeets.[14][15]
Hunter finally emerges in the bottled city of Kandor. Working with Supernova, Hunter has been trying to put together a machine that will "fix" time before Skeets can find him.[16]
