Final Night #3 (1996)
by Karl Kesel & Stuart Immonen
cover by Stuart Immonen
Continuing the Legion’s unfortunate stay in the 20th century…
…and introducing them to Ferro, who is helping Guy Gardner (in his terrible 90s redesign) take care of an injured Wildcat.
We’re not told where Ferro took that mask, by the way.
Speaking of Guy Gardner, the heroes are using his bar as a makeshift headquarters.
Quite possibly because the Justice League won’t get its Watchtower for another couple of months, so that’s the best available place.
To make things worse, the place is out of power.
Guy currently has shapeshifting powers because he was retconned to being half-alien (seriously!), but as you can see he’s as stable as ever.
Not that power is a real problem with Spark around.
Honestly, “the Legion’s Lightning Lass” works way better as her superhero sobriquet than her codename.
She also befriends Ferro, having heard that he saved the alien who warned them about the Sun-Eater.
She also loans him her Flight Ring. Good thing these are typically shown to be incredibly easy to use.
Shocking nobody, Inferno is not as good at making friends.
In one of the most absurd and funny bits of the whole crossover, Hell itself (represented by Etrigan) makes an offer ON TELEVISION to give free access to anyone who wants a bit of warmth.
This is WILD to say the least. It’s one thing for superheroes to be aware that Hell exists, but this is big enough to be discussed on the news and get an official statement from the Pope!
And it’s an… odd statement.
“Quantum mutatus ab illo” is a quote from Virgil’s Aeneid, roughly meaning “How changed from what he was”; I really struggle to understand what the heck it’s supposed to be in this situation… did the Pope want to comment on how Etrigan has changed? Even if that’s the case, is that really the most important thing to comment on!?
Come on. You could’ve done better.
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is busy looking for ways to keep exploiting humanity to get rich supplying Earth with enough power to survive the darkness.
I’m not really sure why Lex brings up the Earth’s core, though. Its temperature has absolutely nothing to do with the Sun.
We also learn that the Spectre is keeping warm Gaea, the Greek goddess of the earth.
See, this is why I really don’t like the way DC brings elements of actual modern religions into its superhero universe.
Not only we had worldwide confirmation that Hell is real, now we have the personification of God’s wrath keeping a Greek goddess alive.
More worryingly, we have the original Starman (who at this time was in the regular cast of the excellent Starman series by James Robinson) give some insight on what’s happening to the Sun.
Brainiac 5 confirms this: the Sun is shrinking while also conserving its mass.
We are told the Sun-Eater is absorbing only energy… which in this context is a vague term to use.
A star is typically in hydrostatic equilibrium: gravity pushes inward, pressure generated by nuclear fusion pushes outwards. If “losing energy” means the Sun-Eater is somehow absorbing the pressure… that’s really, REALLY bad.
Lex Luthor concedes that Brainiac 5 is the expert here, even if he still doesn’t know he’s from the future.
Where they probably have different terminology, because there’s absolutely no way the Sun could ever go “hyper-nova”… it would need at least to be 25 times more massive, and we’re explicitly told the Sun’s mass is not changing.
The correct term is that the Sun is going nova.
In a great bit of worldbuilding, we even learn this is how the Sun-Eater moves from one target to the next. That’s pretty clever!
I think it was only implied in some of the pre-Crisis stories.
We have a few scenes of the Phantom Stranger convincing Dusk to stay, showing her the good of humanity…
…including a panel where Superman and Guardian are taking supplies a hospital in Italy.
Which a bit weird: a caption leaves the word ospedale visible, which makes sense since it just means “hospital”… but the door says ambulanza which means “ambulance”.
This looks like a throwaway moment, but Dusk staying on Earth will have a big impact on the finale.
At this point Superman has basically lost all his powers, so he needs to use the Whiz Wagon from the Jack Kirby Jimmy Olsen run to get back home.
I think the post-Crisis relaunch of Superman is not given enough credit for keeping the Kents alive in Superman’s adulthood.
And we end the issue where we started: at Guy Gardner’s bar, where Spark is apparently getting drunk.
I guess that with the end of the world Guy isn’t worried about his license for serving alcohol to a fourteen year old. Then again, how would they even check her ID?
Is the fact that Guy can’t get drunk the only good thing to ever come out of the retcon of him being half-alien?
We won’t learn until the finale what green surprise aways Guy, but if you have any level of familiarity with his original franchise you can probably figure it out.
Legion significance: 5/10
First meeting between Ferro and the Legionnaires. You might get the idea that only Spark was impressed by him, but we’ll learn the others noticed him as well.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
If the Comics Code had allowed it, the Silver Age would absolutely have had an entire issue dedicated to Hell showing up on TV. Probably as part of a scheme to expose Superman’s secret identity or something.
Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
I’ve already mentioned that I consider Final Night one of the best crossovers DC has ever done, and it continues to impress me every time.
Great characterization, great worldbuilding, great artwork a solid script that doesn’t even make you notice there isn’t a real action scene… and I have to praise something I barely ever mention: the coloring by Lee Loughridge!
Helped by Immonen’s artwork to be sure, but at several points the lightning really makes the scenes and the mood work so much better.
I only have ONE serious complain… man that is a TERRIBLE cover!!!
As I have said before, when I first read this story I had been exposed to the reboot Legion exclusively through the Zero Hour issues.
I’m not entirely sure if I connected Spark to Light Lass (at this point I had only seen her in the Great Darkness saga), but I reading the Final Night issues I thought Inferno was a regular member of the team.
Also, this was my very first exposure to Ferro, as I wouldn’t get to read about the original Ferro Lad or even know of his existence for another four to five years!