Comic Info
Comic Name: The Final Night
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Karl Kesel
Artist: Stuart Immonen
# of Issues: 4
Release Date: 1998
The Final Night #2
Reprints The Final Night #1-4 (November 1996). An alien named Dusk arrives on Earth with a warning: the Sun-Eater is coming! Dusk tells the heroes of Earth that the Sun-Eater cannot be stopped and that the Earth is doomed. A last ditch effort to stop the Sun-Eater and save the sun is underway, and heroes like the Legion of Super-Heroes, Batman, and Superman find themselves working hand-in-hand with Lex Luthor to try to save humanity. Heroes like Ferro arise but to save the Earth a true hero might fall.
Written by Karl Kesel, The Final Night was a big crossover event released weekly in 1996 with multiple issue tie-ins. Parallax: Emerald Night #1 (November 1996) also ties in with the story (falling between issues The Final Night #3 and The Final Night #4). The series was met with mostly positive reviews.
The Final Night really just serves to bring back Hal Jordan to the super-hero fold. After the events of Green Lantern (3) #48-50 (January 1994-March 1994) and Zero Hour #0-4 (September 1994), the fan favorite was a villain, and fans didn’t like it. Unlike Crisis on Infinite Earths #8 (November 1985) which sent Barry Allen off in style and replaced him with the popular Wally West, the Green Lantern that people remembered was replaced with the less popular new character Kyle Rayner.
The Final Night #4
Kyle Rayner worked for the most part, but people didn’t want to think of Hal Jordan as a villain. The Final Night was a chance to redeem Hal Jordan, but it also killed him. Still not happy, Hal Jordan had a long path to returning to Green Lantern which included a bad stint as the Spectre. His death here however was pretty good and it at least led to his return.
The Final Night is very ’90s. Superman has the bad the Return of Superman mullet. The story feels a little jerky and unexplored with so many tie-in that effect the overall story, it seems like it needed to be longer than four issues. Ferro whose story is told in Legion and Superman seems really random in this collection and underdeveloped.
The Final Night is ok, but not great. I wish it had been a six issue series to smooth out the bumpiness. I wish the stories leading up to the big conclusion of The Final Night #4 were more concise and blended together. I also wish they would have put Dusk more in the story as the harbinger of the Sun-Eater (she’s kind of the Silver Surfer of DCU!) and I wouldn’t mind seeing her back.
