GREEN LANTERN vol2 #7 (1961)
by John Broome & Gil Kane
Our first Green Lantern villain in the retrospective is a very important one, but you wouldn’t tell from the cover.
Appropriately enough for a story titled “The day 100,000 people vanished”, we immediately the story with… 100,000 people vanishing. Efficient!
Green Lantern investigates the disappearance without finding anything, informing his friend Tom Kalmaku… who is unfortunately nicknamed Pieface in this period, so naturally I’ll call him Tom if he shows up again.
Green Lantern is telepathically summoned by the Guardians Of The Universe, admitting that they have made ONE mistake.
I don’t know how many Green Lantern issues I’ll end up reviewing, but spoiler alert: that is one heck of an understatement from the Guardians!
Considering he’s not on the cover I was expecting Sinestro to show up rather late in the story, but no, he’s already front and center.
And so we are treated to Sinestro’s origin story, which is pretty much consistent between continuities: he used to be a great Green Lantern until he went full dictator.
It’s the whole “absolute power corrupts absolutely” thing.
Or rather “absolute power corrupts those with a psychological quirk in their brains”. (?????)
If there’s one consistent thing about the Guardians Of The Universe, it’s their frankly amazing ability to ALWAYS fix one of their mistakes by making an even bigger one.
What’s the point of exiling him to another universe!? Especially one YOU KNOW is populated entirely by people who hate the Guardians and the Green Lanterns!?
Also: the Guardians are second only to Kandor in their stalking abilities.
Qward is a distant third, being able to detect what’s happening on Earth with their Super-Radar ™ which cannot see anything but can apparently sense where Green Lantern is going to be and how the city is named. (WTF!?!?)
Also, why exactly is Sinestro so sure that Green Lantern’s ring will not be operating while he’s in the city?
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen, escaping the trap of his soon-to-be mortal enemy by sheer dumb luck.
First order of business is making sure Sinestro can’t kidnap the people of Green Lantern’s city… by turning them invisible.
I have no clue why the Viso-Teleporter ™ would be able to transport only visible people.
This works (SOMEHOW) and Sinestro only kidnaps Green Lantern, causing the civilians to turn visible again. And you cannot convince me there aren’t at the very least dozens of vehicular homicides.
Remember that Green Lantern allowed himself to be taken to Qward to save the people who have been taken hostages…
…and didn’t anticipate the possibility that Sinestro would threaten their lives. WTF did you think he was going to do!?!?!?
I thought the Guardians recruited people without fear for the Green Lantern, but apparently you also need to have no brains!!!
Sinestro won’t obtain his trademark yellow ring for another couple of issues, but he already has the means to trap Green Lantern into a yellow bubble.
So he’s just going to stand around for six hours doing nothing instead of, you know, use the same technology he’s using for the bubble and make a weapon out of it!?!?
The yellow weakness never makes any freaking sense. If it doesn’t stop his power, to the point he’s able to affect the clock, why doesn’t he knock out Sinestro while he’s still in the bubble!?!?
But wait, there is an explanation for why this works… no matter how much I wish there wasn’t.
Also if you could affect the clock, why did you leave yourself such a small margin for error!?!?
(cool panel, though)
Sinestro is pretty confident he’ll get through this not only because Green Lantern is not allowed to kill him, but because he can’t even supersede the Guardians’ authority and bring him back to the regular universe.
So because Green Lantern can’t kill Sinestro, he traps him inside a bubble he can’t escape from.
Including to eat or drink, I guess, so even if the bubble lets him breathe Sinestro is just going to die regardless.
And besides, wouldn’t the bubble disappear once the ring runs out of energy!?
Remember, boys, if you constantly screw everything up but you’re the one in charge, you can pretend you’re always right.
Sinestro will escape that bubble in exactly 2 issues, in case you’re curious.
Historical significance: 10/10
As far as the Green Lantern mythos goes, you don’t get much more important than this.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
I look forward to Green Lantern being trapped inside yellow bubble and forgetting the carbon dioxide trick.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
Meh. The beginning is just fantastic: a good mystery, an interesting villain with a fantastic backstory… then the mystery is immediately dismissed, the backstory doesn’t really matter, and the villain’s plan is idiotic.
How close is this to the Silver Age character?: 9/10
He’s lacking the yellow ring, but otherwise he’s pretty much the definitive Silver Age version.
How close is this to the modern character?: 7/10
While the Silver Age Sinestro is the classic moustache-twirling bad guy, the post-Crisis version started out a little more complex. He was less interested in ruling the universe and more into making sure his own twisted version of law and order would succeed.
I really liked the slight change of his origin, making him the Green Lantern who trained Hal Jordan. It helps making things personal between them.
Sinestro received a huge boost in importance in the DC Universe in the last decade, going so far as having his own Sinestro Corps.
He had his moments, but soon after his resurrection I completely dropped following Green Lantern as I find the whole “emotional spectrum” idea monumentally stupid.
Trivia: according to at least one interview, Gil Kane based Sinestro’s looks on David Niven.
Interesting letters: Green Lantern, much like Flash, was not under the same editor of the Superman and Batman books. Judging from the answer to the letter, it’s easy to figure out their opinion of those titles.
Interesting – I’ve read Captain Marvel (the Big Red Cheese) was based on Fred MacMurray, I did not know that Sinestro was modeled after David Niven. Niven is more of a smooth, classy good-guy type, so I guess Kane was just utilizing the “look” as opposed to any other traits.
Percy Pinkerton from Sgt. Fury was also based on David Niven. I’m sure there are other actors out there who had more than one comic character based on them, but my brain is too tired to think of them right now.