Back in July there were rumors that DC would be launching a Sinestro series written by Matt Kindt and while that announcement wasn’t made Dan DiDio said that such a series was in the works. If true then Green Lantern 23.4 might be an indication of what we could expect if Kindt does indeed become the writer of such a series. While the Sinestro issue of Villain’s Month doesn’t do much to add to the history of the character it is a great primer for newer fans looking for background detail.
What makes this issue stand out are the wonderful layout that Dale Eaglesham works into Lyssa Drak’s recounting of Sinestro’s history, a visually interesting choice of surrounding the art with what looks like the page design for the Book of Parallax which gives the reader the impression that Drak is showing the pages to the reader. It is a little contradictory to the narrative which states that the book has gone missing, but perhaps in Drak trying to draw from her memory this is how she envisions it in her mind.
The issue provides a little bit of new history, showing Sinestro as an archaeologist before the ring comes to him, but his trademark characteristic of making seemingly questionable decisions is apparent right from the get go as his unique perspective leads him to allow the ringbearer crashing on his planet to die simply because he deems himself more worthy of the ring. Kindt does a great job of interweaving the years of history and the major events of Sinestro’s past so that it all fits together nicely, including both some of the trappings of Sinestro’s Silver Age history with Geoff Johns’ timeline.
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| Kindt does a good job of dovetailing Sinestro’s Silver Age past with Johns’ modern take on the character. |
The issue doesn’t herald the return of Sinestro to the DC Universe since the end of Johns’ run but Kindt lays the groundwork for it here, even showing that there are Korugarians who didn’t get killed by Volthoom’s destructive binge that left Sinestro’s homeworld in pieces. It’s not the Sinestro Secret Origin arc that Johns said he’d give us but it is a primer for one of the greatest characters in the Green Lantern universe and it does provide the reader with an official post-Flashpoint history of Sinestro – well at least the version of history according to Lyssa Drak’s memory.
As a veteran reader of Green Lantern I didn’t find this issue terribly rewarding – not because it wasn’t good but because for me it was a “been there, done that” experience that didn’t add anything of real value to the mythology of the character. However for newer readers it does provide a nice but not too terribly deep of an introduction to Sinestro. Eaglesham’s pencils are spot on for the most part and the issue’s page layout is visually compelling. Three out of five lanterns.
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