Coming out of DC One Million, Tom Peyer and Rags Morales focused on a version of Hourman from the 853rd Century, now sightseeing in the 20th Century. With the notion ostensibly being that the android needed to learn more about not being omnipotent, the creative team made sure to create a lot of different people and aspects for Hourman to play off of and contrast with. They paired him primarily with former Justice League mascot Snapper Carr, for starters, now bumming around writing a memoir in his old home town. Snapper knew all about being human, and all about being around superhumans. He also knew a lot about failure and guilt, and didn't always exercise good judgment in his advice.
Snapper also knew a lot of more or less ordinary people, from his ex-girlfriend Beth, to her cantankerous sheriff of a mother, Aubrey. All of which gave "Ty" a chance to interact with people who weren't superheroes and learn about being human as well. Some of this played as comedy, Ty learning how to order a coffee and finding out he and caffeine don't mix. Some of it is more melodramatic, as Ty and Beth fall for each other, though the creative team blessedly avoid any love triangle with them and Snapper. And sometimes it's more serious, Ty resisting making decisions on his own, or Snapper and Beth dealing with their advice having negative consequences.
Because this is DC, there had to be a legacy aspect, so Hourman also tried to investigate the heroic tradition he was part of, mostly through the original Hourman. I don't know if the notion Rex Tyler tended to get a little nuts or boorish when he was on Miraclo was already going around, or if it started here (I feel like James Robinson nodded towards it at times in Starman), but the android gets glimpses of his ancestor that aren't too flattering.
Snapper also has to try and come to grips with that time the Joker tricked him into betraying the JLA, as well as the fact that at some point, he had space adventures as a guy who could teleport by snapping his fingers. Until he was captured and his hands got cut off. As far as I know, that's something Peyer retconned into Snapper's history, and I'm not sure why. To give him unresolved trauma that explains the fact he looks like shit constantly in this book and avoids contact with his old costumed pals?
The book uses flashbacks, both to the Golden Age and Snapper's Silver Age JLA adventures, and Morales adopts a more simplified style for those parts (although the layouts and number of panels don't change much), while Kalisz' color work tends to simpler, broader schemes. Trying to evoke a different age, even if the flashback reveals things weren't so simple as the legends say.
But there's the legacy of the name he carries, and there's the legacy of his origins: an android. So Amazo, as maybe the earliest example, gets set up as a sort of foil. One frustrated by his own limitations, and envious of the limitations Hourman didn't have originally. He pops up several times, with various designs, including what I thought was a pretty cool one with a skull face. I don't know why Amazo settled on that design, but it looked cool.
As Amazo keeps taking different approaches, it forces Hourman to confront different issues. At one point, he has to deal with the fact he brought Amazo back, and got half his time powers stolen. Another time, Hourman feels he's been supplanted by a more experienced version of himself, and runs off to sulk on an entire star system devoted to celebrating him, before getting forcibly jolted out of his funk by a very harsh psychotherapist. In the story the splash page is from, Amazo is stealing humanity from his victims, rather than power, turning them into automatons instead. Hourman's got to deal with this without Snapper, while Amazo taunts him about being far more human now.
The book ends with a time-traveling field trip for Ty and the supporting cast, with Hourman returning them home, then rushing off to fight Amazo one more time. I have no idea what happened to the character after that, since at some point, the original Hourman's son got cured of some weird time-disease he had and became the Hourman who ran around in Geoff Johns' JSA.
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