(Originally posted on The Comics Bolt)
The Knights of the Round Table had Sir Mordred. The Valar of Middle Earth had Morgoth. The Jedi had Darth Vader. Where does Sinestro, traitor to the Green Lantern Corps, rank among his fellow renegades? We'll find out today in this week's First Strike!
The Knights of the Round Table had Sir Mordred. The Valar of Middle Earth had Morgoth. The Jedi had Darth Vader. Where does Sinestro, traitor to the Green Lantern Corps, rank among his fellow renegades? We'll find out today in this week's First Strike!
Evil counterparts and fallen paragons are an age-old literary device, and when DC revamped Green Lantern for the Silver Age, creating an entire corps of emerald-clad ring-slingers, a renegade among their ranks was certainly a given. Other than that, I don't know much else about what went into the creation of Sinestro, and like many classic comic book villains, there may not be much to tell on that score. I've heard he was in part modeled on actor David Niven, although I haven't been able to confirm this.
As our story opens, the entire population of the city of Valdale vanishes without a trace, and Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern of Earth, is at a loss to explain why. He gets his answers when the Guardians of the Universe, the immortals who created and run the Green Lantern Corps, summon him to their home world of Oa with a dire warning. Sinestro, once the mightiest and most renowned Green Lantern, was corrupted by the power he wielded and became dictator of his homeworld of Korugar. For his crimes, he was stripped of his ring and uniform, and banished to the anti-matter universe of Qward, where evil is worshipped. Sinestro allied himself with the Qwardians, vowing to destroy the Guardians and the Green Lanterns on their behalf. It now falls to Jordan to defeat the renegade and rescue the people of Valdale, bait for Sinestro's carefully laid trap.
As our story opens, the entire population of the city of Valdale vanishes without a trace, and Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern of Earth, is at a loss to explain why. He gets his answers when the Guardians of the Universe, the immortals who created and run the Green Lantern Corps, summon him to their home world of Oa with a dire warning. Sinestro, once the mightiest and most renowned Green Lantern, was corrupted by the power he wielded and became dictator of his homeworld of Korugar. For his crimes, he was stripped of his ring and uniform, and banished to the anti-matter universe of Qward, where evil is worshipped. Sinestro allied himself with the Qwardians, vowing to destroy the Guardians and the Green Lanterns on their behalf. It now falls to Jordan to defeat the renegade and rescue the people of Valdale, bait for Sinestro's carefully laid trap.
Sinestro may not have his iconic yellow ring yet - that would make its debut in his next appearance two issues later - but his years of experience as a Green Lantern himself still make him a worthy opponent for Hal. He's a cliché villain in almost every way imaginable, from his name to his satanic appearance, but that's part of the charm of the Silver Age. However, Sinestro's defiant speech to GL after his defeat says a lot about his personality. His master plan has been thwarted, Green Lantern handed him his keister and now has him completely helpless, and Sinestro's still mouthing off like he holds the upper hand. It's hokey as all hell, and nothing seasoned veterans of fiction in any medium haven't heard before, but it's still enough to elevate Sinestro's debut from otherwise passably decent at best to pretty friggin' awesome.
Although his appearances became more sporadic as time went on, Sinestro initially showed up pretty often after this story. However, it took him a while to hit his stride as an imposing, dreaded villain, thanks to the goofy nature of Silver Age comics he appeared in. One such story had Sinestro trying to win a "most evil" popularity contest in Qward, and another would have him possess a fershlugginah taxi cab and becoming a crime boss. (Said taxi cab once belonged to Doiby Dickles, sidekick to the Green Lantern of the 1940s.) As the decades went on, though, Sinestro became far more ruthless and his methods far more destructive. Kilowog, a Green Lantern whose homeworld was destroyed during Crisis on Infinite Earths, managed to resurrect his entire race on a new planet, only for Sinestro to destroy them all - and the planet with it - out of cruel spite. He was later revealed to have been responsible for Hal Jordan becoming the villain Parallax (who basically served as Kyle Rayner's own Sinestro back when he was GL), and Sinestro now even has his own Lantern Corps named after him.
While Sinestro remains one of the arch-foes of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan specifically, contemporary writers such as Geoff Johns have embellished their relationship. Sinestro has now been established as Jordan's mentor and friend, with Hal being the one to expose Sinestro's crimes to the Guardians, leading to his expulsion from the Corps. Johns in particular took Sinestro down the Well-Intentioned Extremist path, depicting him as devoted to maintaining order in the universe by any means necessary and even giving him a redemption arc of sorts. He's still a villain, but not one driven by ambition and malice. Personally, I rather like these changes. Making him a zealot instead of a mustache-twirling "muah ha ha, I'm evil" bad buy gives him more substance as a character and adds some layers to his conflicts with the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan in particular. It's still nothing that hasn't been done before, but if you're a rookie to superheroes, or even sci-fi fantasy, that won't matter.
While Sinestro remains one of the arch-foes of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan specifically, contemporary writers such as Geoff Johns have embellished their relationship. Sinestro has now been established as Jordan's mentor and friend, with Hal being the one to expose Sinestro's crimes to the Guardians, leading to his expulsion from the Corps. Johns in particular took Sinestro down the Well-Intentioned Extremist path, depicting him as devoted to maintaining order in the universe by any means necessary and even giving him a redemption arc of sorts. He's still a villain, but not one driven by ambition and malice. Personally, I rather like these changes. Making him a zealot instead of a mustache-twirling "muah ha ha, I'm evil" bad buy gives him more substance as a character and adds some layers to his conflicts with the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan in particular. It's still nothing that hasn't been done before, but if you're a rookie to superheroes, or even sci-fi fantasy, that won't matter.
Green Lantern (Vol. 5) #20 (July, 2013)
In any adaptation of Green Lantern to other mediums, Sinestro has always been there, to the point where it's hard to imagine any GL project without him. He's been voiced by a wide variety of talented actors - Ted Levine, Victor Garber, Jason Isaacs, Ron Perlman, and John de Lancie (in the Duck Dodgers episode "The Green Loontern") - and his portrayal in the live-action Green Lantern film by Mark Strong is considered by many fans to be a highlight of an otherwise unremarkable-at-best movie. (My ideal Sinestro, had a Green Lantern film been made in the 1990s, would have been Alan Rickman.) Like in the comics, sometimes he's an all-out villain, sometimes he's a mentor figure, and sometimes he's in between.
"The Day 100,000 People Vanished!" might seem overly simple to seasoned Green Lantern readers used to a more epic scale. However, for those of you who want to see Sinestro's first appearance, or simply enjoy a story from when the Green Lantern mythos was a lot less complex, it's worth your time.
"The Day 100,000 People Vanished!" might seem overly simple to seasoned Green Lantern readers used to a more epic scale. However, for those of you who want to see Sinestro's first appearance, or simply enjoy a story from when the Green Lantern mythos was a lot less complex, it's worth your time.
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