Comics Archeology

Final Night #4 (1996)
by Karl Kesel & Stuart Immonen

Time to finish the reboot Legion’s first 20th century crossover.

Although this requires a (hopefully) brief tangent first.

Parallax: Emerald Night
by Ron Marz & Mike McKone

This special focuses on Hal Jordan, who you might recalled turned into the supervillain Parallax during Zero Hour.
And he starts the story by taking his revenge on Cyborg Superman, the supervillain responsible for destroying Coast City.
Hal summons the ghosts of all the people the Cyborg has killed to take their revenge… or at least that’s the visual effect, I don’t think he’s literally summoning ghosts.

He then meets the current Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, who asks for Hal’s help with dealing with the Sun-Eater.

As Parallax, Hal is incredibly powerful. But even he isn’t sure he can defeat the Sun-Eater.

And that’s when the special reconnects to Final Night #3, because that’s where meets Guy Gardner.

This is a quick but interesting analysis of how these two former Green Lanterns see each other.
The first time I read this I barely knew Guy Gardner, but this exchange immediately made him stand out to me.
Guy can be… A LOT… and way too many writers go completely overboard with him: other characters should find him insufferable, NOT the reader.
But when he clicks, Guy can be a lot of fun.

There’s other stuff going on in this book, but what’s important for the sake of this retrospective is that Hal decides he’s going to save Earth no matter what.

Returning to the main book, Brainiac 5 gives a summary of the dire situation.

The heroes go through the plan, and it’s not a bad one.
Lex Luthor has created 500,000 force field emitters based on the same technology of Brainy’s belt (!!!), and has had the Flash build them super-fast.
Kind of worrying to let Lex anywhere near that kind of tech, but as we have already seen one of Brainiac 5’s weak spots in this era is adapting to work with less advanced technology.

The force field emitters will be able to block 97% of the explosion, which is really impressive.

You didn’t expect I would miss the chance to turn this into a COMPLETELY useless astronomical calculation, did you?

In reality the Sun is way too small to go nova, but let’s pretend the Sun-Eater is somehow creating the right conditions.
A typical nova releases at least 10³⁷ joules. Luthor says the emitters will absorb 97% of that, and since there are 500,000 emitters, every single one of those will absorb 1.94 x 10³¹ joules.
That’s about 92 TRILLION TIMES the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated and again: this is being done BY A SINGLE EMITTER.
To put things into a 30th century perspective: that’s supposed to be the knockoff cheap version of Brainiac 5’s force field belt.
And finally: that 3% that the emitters won’t absorb?
That’s STILL over 1,300 times more energy that what would be necessary to completely vaporize Earth, a number that I know for non-nefarious reasons^{(citation needed)}.

This is why it was important to have Dusk gain faith in humanity in the previous issues, because the plan is going to use her spaceship.
Kind of redundant given that I’m pretty sure the heroes have at least a couple of spaceships at their disposal already, but it’s the thought that counts.

As we saw last time Green Lantern was supposed to pilot the ship but he’s suddenly unavailable (because he’s being summoned by Hal in the other book), so Superman volunteers.

Except someone else beats him to the self-sacrifice race…

…which would surprise anyone who hasn’t read enough Silver Age Legion.

Despite being on a VERY tight schedule, the heroes scramble to save Ferro.

But that’s when Hal returns to Earth, offering to save the planet… to Batman’s disapproval, since he still doesn’t trust him.

He even suggests using his Parallax powers to avoid all the various secondary effects of turning the Sun on again.

I understand Batman’s skepticism towards Hal, considering that the last time they met he was fully into god complex mode.
But I think he’s going a bit too far here: not only because Hal didn’t suggest going overboard, he literally CAN’T remake the world in his image anymore because he lost the time manipulation powers he had during Zero Hour.

I like the background detail of Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl being confused.
They BARELY arrived in the 20th century when the crossover started, they must have next to no idea about what’s going on.

This is, however, a suicide mission in Hal’s mind.

Good thing he showed up, because Lex’s plan is not going to work.

And so Ferro is caught by the solar flare preceding the nova…

…only to be saved by Parallax.

After sending Ferro back to Earth, in a sequence that I’ve always loved Hal Jordan finds a specific way to deal with the Sun-Eater.

Hal’s turn to the dark side was handled terribly, but this could have been the perfect way to end his journey. His eventual resurrection ruins this moment.

Saturn Girl is the one confirming his death. And she’s not wrong, considering that before his resurrection we literally meet him in Purgatory.

And we close with Superman and Batman disagreeing on whether Hal Jordan actually redeemed himself or not.

In 1996, you could make the argument that Batman is right.
In 2026, after the sheer amount of crap he’s pulled over the years, he’d be a colossal hypocrite.

Legion significance: 3/10
This is QUITE important for the DC Universe as a whole: Hal will stay dead for 3 years, then become the new Spectre in 1999, then be fully resurrected in 2004 when DC ran out of ideas Hal became Green Lantern again.
But for the Legion of Super-Heroes specifically? This was barely a blip.

Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.

Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
Have I mentioned how much I hate how DC ruined this by eventually resurrecting Hal Jordan?
While I didn’t care for his Parallax era, I really liked both his sacrifice and his stint as the new Spectre. I haven’t read a ton of Hal stories after his return, but quite frankly nothing he’s done since his return strikes me as interesting as what he was doing during his redemption arc.
But that has little bearing on THIS story specifically, which is still quite strong. I particularly liked how the plan mostly requires steps that were foreshadowed, and the Ferro misdirection.
My only minor complain is that Hal should’ve had SOME role before the last issue, because he quite literally comes out of nowhere.

Who did it better?
Luthor’s plan is somewhat reminiscent of how the original Sun-Eater was defeated.
Although Tharok’s bomb is not described in as much detail, it’s also supposed to absorb its power… somehow.
In terms of the specifics of the plan, I think the Final Night version is superior. It’s easier to understand what it’s supposed to be doing and it’s introduced more organically, while in the original the bomb is literally introduced ONE PAGE before it’s detonated.
The rest of the story is too vastly different to make any sort of honest comparison.

Bonus: the Legion has a couple of extremely minor cameos set during Final Night.
Cosmic Boy hs cameos in retellings of the main miniseries in Flash #119 and Takion #6.

Green Lantern v3 #81 serves as the epilogue, with the funeral of Hal Jordan that the Legionnaires (and Ferro) attend. They’re just in the background though; a pity, since it would’ve made sense for Ferro to talk to SOMEONE about Hal taking his place.

It sure would be a waste to later show Batman still angry at Hal several years later after his resurrection.

Not to end on such a sour note: during the Final Night months, Impulse #19 has a story that is set entirely in one of his dreams.

It’s notable because at this point he hasn’t met the Legion yet, and we get a glimpse of how he imagines them.

I understand thinking Apparition would be a ghost, Cosmic Boy a living magnet, Spark being made of lightning and Brainiac 5 wearing a weird costume.
But even with Impulse’s imagination, what could XS have possibly said to give him the impression of how fat Saturn Girl would be?