DC Comics has been about pushing the limits of what a superhero story can be for almost 90 years now. While Marvel Comics released the first modern event comic in Marvel Super Heroes Contest of Champions, DC had been doing proto-event comics for decades. The gathering of the Justice Society is a perfect example; back then, putting all the heroes together to fight a big threat was an event. In the Silver Age, DC would start their “Crisis” stories, which would see the Justice League travel across the multiverse, meeting new heroes and villains, saving all of creation. Justice League of America (Vol. 1) was the event comic of its day, giving readers superhero stories at a scale that most books couldn’t hope to match.
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Marvel got a head start with their events, but DC struck back with the best ever in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Since then, the publisher has been putting out some fantastic events. While they don’t do nearly as many as Marvel does (there are three event stories running right now), they’ve put out a lot of gems. Stories like Infinite Crisis, Blackest Night, Final Crisis, DC One Million (okay, I added that one on may own), Dark Knights: Death Metal and more are all perfect examples of what an event comic should be. DC is amazing at eventsand one of the best of them has fallen through cracks. 1996 was a very different year for comics. Marvel was in the throes of bankruptcy and DC was putting out some of the best written superhero comics of the decade. That summer, they did their big event book, a story that we don’t talk about very much but deserves all of the praise in the world – The Final Night.
The Final Night Is Unlike Any Event You’ve Ever Read
So, usually when you think of an event book, you think of the heroes being forced to band together against a massive threat that they couldn’t handle on their own. There’s big battles, climactic twists, and those group shots that go so very hard when they’re done right. They’re the big summers movies of the comic industry. When you think of a DC event, you add in multiversal shenanigans. The most well-known DC events usually involve a continuity reboot of some sort, leading to it becoming something of a stereotype. The Final Night doesn’t have a big threat, or at least not like you’re expecting, and it isn’t a continuity reboot. It is, however, excellent.
The four-issue miniseries was who had been writing Adventures of Superman for years, creating Conner Kent Superboy. He was writing Superboy at the time and was a known, trusted hand with DC characters. Stuart Immonen was tapped for pencils, having made a name for himself drawing Legion of Superheroes and working with Kesel on Action Comics. They were an awesome team, and The Final Night saw them create the most unique event book ever
In this comic, a Sun-Eater – alien monsters that eat stars – heads toward Earth, with the heroes doing their best to prepare for its coming. However, the heroes are unable to stop it from getting to the sun or sending it somewhere else and it lives up to its name. Suddenly, the heroes who defeated the Anti-Monitor and Darkseid had to deal with an enemy they couldn’t punch – the cold of space. They did everything they could, but kept failing, leading to help coming from a most unexpected source – Parallax. Hal Jordan reignites the sun at the cost of his life, making up for the evils he had done since “Emerald Twilight”.
The Final Night isn’t exactly an all-new idea – we’ve seen this plot elsewhere in sci-fi. However, using DC’s superheroes to tell the story was a novel way of doing it. While it didn’t have the big villain or the massive fights of other ecents, it had the scope and scale, it had the tension, but most of all, it had this undercurrent of hopelessness, this feeling that the heroes were going to fail. It makes the ending so much better, as life is snatched from the certain jaws of death by the last person that anyone ever expected.
While they sell well, event comics are one of the most maligned parts of the comic industry. While superhero spectacle is a lot of fun, it can ring hollow after a while. One of the biggest problems with being a Marvel reader is that there are so many events that it gets tiring. On top of that, they hijack books readers like for tie-ins and promise “change” that’s never all that different from what came before. DC builds their events better, but they’re still kind of annoying, even for those of us who like event comics.
However, The Final Night impresses by telling a story that destroys the sun, which is event comic as all get out, and then uses that as the starting point for a somber meditation on heroes and death. It has the massive moments you want to see and, best of all, it’s the kind of interesting idea that other creators can use to tell awesome stories, so the tie-ins are actually worth reading. Who doesn’t want to write a story about a hero nobly trying to save as many lives as they can in a hopeless situation? Who doesn’t want to see a story about people having to deal with inevitable defeat? This is a story with meat and that’s what makes it so special.
The Final Night Has Been Criminally Underrated for Decades
I’ve always been partial to DC events. I’m a Crisis mark; I love the big continuity-altering events and what comes after them. I’m an odd sort. However, even saying that, I don’t want the same kind of event story all the time. Events can be just about any threat big enough to gather the whole superhero community, showing how they deal with variety of calamities. Event comics can get much too staid, too formulaic, which is what makes The Final Night so great. It’s certainly an event, but it’s more about a group of people who never lose having to deal with losing than it is punching cosmic villain #273 or Darkseid.
It’s a brilliant comic. ’90s books have a bad reputation, but mid ’90s DC is full of well-written, adroitly drawn comics. The Final Night stood head and shoulders above the competition (by contrast, Marvel was doing “Onslaught” in ’96; I like “Onslaught”, but we all know this is much better) and is still among the best events ever. It’s not what you expect from an event comic and that makes a whole lot of difference. We need more comics like right now, books that use superheroes to tell interesting stories that go in intriguing, unique directions.
I think The Final Night is the best ’90s event comic (yes, better than Infinity Gauntlet), so sound off in the comments below about your opinion on it.
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