Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Green Lantern 23.4 Sinestro


The greatest Green Lantern of all time gets his entire history told in this one-shot in Villains Month.


As a perfect tribute to Sinestro (though admittedly a biased one, coming from Lysa Drak, former book-keeper of the Book of Parallax), this book was perfect!


Told in frame format, this traces Sinestro's journey from archeologist to Green Lantern to Yellow Lantern. His rise, fall and second wave. All effectively done in 20 pages.


Geoff Johns recreated the GL mythology greatly, but I've always found the way he redefined Sinestro into an anti-hero from a chessy villain one of the more brilliant moves. And Matt Kindt is able to capture that beautifully.

We get Sinestro from start to finish. His beginnings as an archeologist obsessed with Korugar's past to Green Lantern, friend of Abin Sur and husband of Arin Sur then ruthless dictator of Korugar to Yellow Lantern and finally, his loss of Korugar and the Yellow Lantern Corps to his murder of the malevolent Gaurdians.

In between we see a totally new dark moment. Like Hal Jordan after him, Sinestro obtained his ring from a dying Green Lantern who had landed on his planet. But unlike Jordan who tried to save Abin, Sinestro let the previous wielder die despite his pleas for help because he believed he was a better suit for the ring.


The character moments are great. Abin's talk of harnessing other colours in the spectrum (which led to the Yellow Lantern Corps under Sinestro and the Indigo Tribe under Abin) to Arin's reveal that she gave away their daughter Soranik Natu (who I've sorely missed in the New 52) and the cold reception that Sinestro gives this news.


But in the end, this issue's highlights are it's faults. It offers only one or two new moments (but those do enrich our knowledge of Sinestro) and most of it is something that is already known. We do not get anything about what Sinestro is doing now (and who cares about Lysa?), but the tease that there are homeless Korugarians stranded encourage the notion that Sinestro may return.

But thankfully for now, we are left with a mosaic of Sinestro - archeologist, friend, husband, father, mentor and arguably the man who saved the universe from the mad Gaurdians.
 

So, I give this 8.0 out of 10

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