Green Lantern 23.4
Special “Villains Month” Title: Sinestro 1
Matt Kindt, Dale Eaglesham
Forever Evil Crossover
Spoiler alert! You have been warned!
The final Green Lantern tie-in to Villains Month and Forever Evil was one of the one-shots I was looking forward to most. I’ve always loved Sinestro and the artwork of Dale Eaglesham is always something I’ll seek out in my superhero books. It was just an added bonus that writer Matt Kindt was along for the ride. He’s impressed me with his recent Harley Quinn and Deadshot one-shots and I’ll even admit that the Solomon Grundy script was decent. But the beauty of Villains Month is not only the exposure to new and exciting (and sometimes old and equally exciting) talents and characters, but the fact that not all of the villains are actually bad guys. Or, at least in the case of Sinestro, don’t view themselves as such.
The origin of Sinestro is beautifully retold by keeper of the Book of Parallax. Though this is nothing new, it’s always fun to see different creators’ interpretations of classic origin tales. I personally enjoyed the nice touch of bordering and framing the flashback sequences within the book, giving the story-within-a-story a sort of children’s book feel. Seeing Sinestro’s rise, and fall, and rise again is a story that will never get old to me. He’s just as heroic as Hal Jordan, and it was nice to see it from his perspective for once. If you really think about it, he might actually be the good guy in the end. And the fact that the keeper is going to go searching the galaxy for her people’s leader is a good segue into the next appearance, wherever that may be.
I’d suggest you save the buck and buy the regular cover, but if you’re a hardcore Green Lantern fan, it’s kind of neat to get the fancy one. Overall, this was a fun issue. Nothing new added to the already excellent mythos, but nothing broken. Only clarified and possibly introduced to new audiences. Which was the point of Villains Month, I’m starting to gather. Great artwork paired with a good script and a fan-favorite character are a recipe for success. The only thing this book was missing was a scene or two featuring good old Sinestro himself, possibly watching from above. It would have also been nice to see where he went after Geoff Johns ended his legendary run on the Green Lantern books, but perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
My Rating: 4.5/5
