Hey, you know what would be awesome to hear about, again? How about Sinestro’s origin? As DC continues to push through with Villains Month, their thirty day tribute overkill to every. single. solitary. villain. on their roster, the rest of us must swim through tedious retellings of stories we all know, simply so said villain can have their own book.
Writer Matt Kindt, who I usually enjoy, does little more than organize the Sinestro story behind the ramblings of Lyssa Drak, Keeper of the Books of Parallax. She’s looking for Sinestro, pissed that he vanished after the end of the battle with the First Lantern. The idea of a whole comic dedicated to some aggressive space chick searching out the purple-skinned ex-Sinestro Corps leader must have been boring, so Kindt uses her to recount the story of Sinestro.
Apparently, on Korugar, Sinestro started out as an archeologist. One day, while dusting his relics, a ship crashed just outside the site. Cue a Green Lantern with a hose head who’s dying. The Weaponer of Qward trying to steal it interrupts Sinestro’s interest in Lantern’s ring. Nope. No dice. The most powerful piece of bling in the universe jumps onto Sinestro’s hand, giving him the power to kill the Weaponer. Instead of returning the ring and saving the dying Lantern, Sinestro lets him die, realizing the ring will better suit his needs.
From there, we watch as Sinestro builds a new era of peace on Korugar. He meets and is trained by Abin Sur, while he also falls in love with Sur’s sister. After Sur’s death, Sinestro becomes friends with his replacement, Hal Jordan. When Jordan sees how Sinestro has crossed the line into tyranny on Korugar, the battle begins. Sinestro is banished to the anti-matter universe, where he creates the Sinestro Corps.
On and on, the story we all know gets repeated. Don’t get me wrong, Matt Kindt does a fine job of organizing the story, but there’s no point to it. At the end, we get a notion that the people of Korugar might not be extinct, and that somewhere down the line Sinestro will return, but these are ideas better left to the start of that actual storyline. By the time Villains Month’s Sinestro #1 ends, all you know is you’ve spent $2.99 on a comic, $3.99 if you went for the “3-D Cover.”
Dale Eaglesham’s art would be perfectly acceptable – nothing grand, or explosively creative, but an acceptable level work to tell this story – but the problem is that, at some point, a decision was made to frame every page with an intricate design. Every page. Every one. It’s like flipping through a Gaelic Christmas catalog. The framing paralyzes the panels and completely ends any movement. Based solely on the panels and the framing, Green Lantern #23.4 comes off like a grouping of tarot cards.
Villains Month is starting to strain not just the wallet, but also the patience.
(2 Story, 2 Art)
