Hard Time is a comic book series written by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes and originally published by DC Focus, a short-lived imprint of DC Comics. The aim of the imprint was to feature super-powered characters who did not follow the traditional format of classic superhero adventures. Hard Time 's first run was 12 issues long, published from April 2004 to March 2005.
The series returned from hiatus in December 2005, titled Hard Time: Season Two. With the demise of DC Focus, this run was published under the unfocused DC bullet.[1] The comic ended with issue #7 of Season Two in June 2006.
Storyline
Backstory
Hard Time focuses on 15-year-old Ethan Harrow (early publicity referred to him as "Ethan Chiles"), who was involved in a high-school shooting scare gone wrong which cost several students their lives. For two years Travis Danes and the high school football team bullied Ethan and his friend Brandon Snood, whose home life was fairly bad. After Travis and two of his friends tried to rape a girl named Inez Mellencamp, Brandon stopped it by setting off the fire alarm. Travis and his friends merely got suspended for a week. Later Ethan and Brandon plan a "fake" school shooting as a way of getting back at the jocks. Things go wrong and Brandon winds up shooting several students and faculty members. As Ethan later tells his lawyer, "it was supposed to be a joke. Brandon told me the guns were loaded with blanks". Ethan is initially in shock, but when Brandon levels his gun at Alyssa Nichols, a girl that Ethan has feelings for, Ethan tries to stop him. Unsuccessful at first, Ethan's super-power emerges, killing Brandon.
After the shooting, Travis was paralyzed and Brandon was dead, along with four others. Although Ethan was not directly involved with the murders, he was tried as an adult and given fifty years to life in prison with eligibility for parole in the year 2053. Ethan maintains that the media convicted him before he ever got to trial.
Season one
While in prison, Ethan continues to manifest a superpower called the "KHE-CHARE" that appears as
Bibliography
- HARD TIME (imprint DC Focus) #1–12 (April 2004 – March 2005)
- HARD TIME SEASON TWO #1–7 (December 2005 – June 2006)
Collected editions
The series has been collected into trade paperbacks:
- Hard Time: 50 to Life (collects Hard Time #1–6, 144 pages, 2004, ISBN 978-1401204716)
- Hard Time: Sixteen (collects Hard Time #7–12, 144 pages, 2013, ISBN 978-1401237943)
- Hard Time: The Complete series (collects Hard Time #1-12 and Hard Time: Season Two #1-7, 464 pages, 2020, ISBN 978-1779508218)
External links
References
- Steve Gerber's blog retrieved 2011-01-25^