When you hear the name Sinestro, you probably don’t think, “hmm, he sounds trustworthy.” And for most of the history of the Green Lantern comics, you’d be right. That’s precisely why it was so shocking and exciting when the longtime villain turned hero a few years back. Part of the fun of having a well-established character is subverting people’s expectations of that character. That’s not what happens here though. In fact, Sinestro lives up to his name and does exactly what you’d expect: he turns evil.
Granted, the way he goes about it is pretty surprising. Drawing his power from Parrallax (a monstrous manifestation of the yellow light of fear), Sinestro’s health is restored and he sends the members of his corps off to bring order to the universe. However, as he explains it, “sacrifice and altruism” can only achieve so much. The only real way to keep chaos at bay is to control people through fear—even if that means you have to kill a few of them. So, while, this isn’t exactly a surprising twist, it’s at least a different approach and one that feels almost painfully familiar given what’s happened during the last week and a half of national party conventions.
Unfortunately for Sinestro and luckily for everyone else, his path to bringing order to the universe isn’t going to be as easy as he thinks. Though the Green Lantern Corps was destroyed pre-Rebirth, they return here with even less effort than Hal Jordan put into making a new ring in the one-shot from two weeks ago. And while this book’s title made it pretty clear writer Robert Venditti was going to find a way to bring everyone back, it’s still a slightly disappointing turn of events.
Still, the whole point of reboots is to attract new readers and returning the book to this familiar setup will inevitably make it easier for people with a cursory knowledge of Green Lantern Lore to jump in now. However, for everyone else, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #1 just feels like a disappointing missed opportunity to do something surprising.
Rating: 5/10
