Batman and Commissioner Gordon’s cold night in Gotham feels a lot like “The Final Night”, and could hint at the DCU’s future.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the story “As Always” in Detective Comics #1027 by Scott Snyder, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Marcelo Maiolo, and Tom Napolitano.
Batman goes through a lot in the course of a night protecting Gotham City. Whether it’s battling street-level thugs or one of his many supervillains, the Dark Knight is Gotham’s nocturnal defender. What happens, though, if the sun never comes up and the night becomes permanent? The story “As Always” in Detective Comics #1027 explores this idea and gives some serious nods to the ’90s crossover event, Final Night.
“As Always” is narrated by Commissioner Jim Gordon and takes place after Batman had a particularly rough night. After a bunch of gargoyles came to life, Batman saved the night by exposing the creatures as just regular bad guys with a gimmick. As Jim and Bats make small talk waiting for the sun to come up, the unexpected happens: the sun never comes up. Jim immediately knows it’s serious when Batman gets a call from the Justice League.
“The sun was just… gone,” Gordon narrates. “Already we were drifting out of orbit along with every other planet in the solar system.” All he and the rest of humanity could do was wait as the Earth got colder and colder and became unlivable and all life perishes. This story is similar to the 1996 crossover event, “The Final Night” by Karl Kesel, Stuart Immonen, Jose Marzan Jr., Jeff Albrecht, and Del Barras. In “The Final Night”, a creature, the Sun-Eater, comes to our solar system and begins devouring the sun. This event has four core issues along with 20 issues that cross over into various DC published titles. This event had a significant effect on the DCU, as this crisis was the first step of Hal Jordan’s redemption from being Parallax and his being accepted back into the Green Lantern Corps. This event also helped set up the resurrection of Oliver Queen, who died in an explosion the year before.
What makes the event so interesting is that it’s more character-driven than other DC events. Though there is a central villain, the Sun-Eater, there is barely any information given on its background. Instead, this is primarily a story of survival that focuses on how the characters respond to that crisis while attempting to prevent all life on Earth from ending. “As Always” is told similarly as Jim Gordon reacts to the crisis on Earth while the heroes are in space.
Gordon stays in touch with Batman and asks him for updates on what is going on. Batman calmly responds that the League is “talking to some people.” What Batman leaves out is that the League is battling their greatest enemies who could be responsible for, and have the power to, displace the sun. The League “interrogates” Darkseid, The Anti-Monitor, and Brainiac. Gordon and other members of the GCPD, meanwhile, try their best to contain the crisis and quell the citizens, but Jim knows no matter what they do on Earth, “it was all futile.”