By: Cullen Bunn (story), Rags Morales (art), Jason Wright (colors)
The Story: Why does it always have to be about Hal Jordan? Jordan, Jordan, Jordan!
The Review: Around the fourth issue of a new series is usually the point when I know whether it’s a keeper or on the road to being Dropped. I’m more than happy to give every title a fair shake, recognizing that there are such things as sleeper hits, but my time is also better spent seeking out worthy replacements than sticking to the stubbornly mediocre. Also, and this is no minor point, I am not made of money.
In better economic times or with a leaner choice of titles out there, I might have stuck with Sinestro for a while yet. I remember the hard, early days on this site (and I shudder to think that was nearly four years ago) when I covered the consistently underperforming Doom Patrol, R.E.B.E.L.S., Justice Society of America, and Legion of Super-Heroes for months on end, mostly because I had few other options to turn to (or so I thought). Now, if I set aside Sinestro, there are at least three possibilities to take its place.*
So what exactly has made Sinestro fail the cut? The utter disappointment of its antagonists, for one thing, a disappointment I’ve been calling since the series debuted. The Paling has a fairly limited objective—remove emotion from the universe—and they carry it out in the most ambiguous manner. It’s hard to figure out exactly what they’re doing to Romat-Ru and Sinestro. Each is confronted by disagreeable visions from the Paling’s power; Romat sees himself dragged into the dark by dozens of himself, while Sinestro sees Hal Jordan gaining the love of his people, his daughter, even his own corpsmen. Are these meant to be their greatest fears because they’re ostensibly driven by fear? But how does the Paling manage to purge emotion from their victims by forcing them to experience it?
Even worse, it takes relatively little effort to dispatch the Paling, despite some initial difficulty. They’re only immune to the emotion-fueled attacks of the Lanterns so long as they can maintain their concentration on any one emotion, apparently. That means it only takes the cooperation of another emotion—oh, say, Natu’s willpower and courage—to distract the Paling enough to make all attacks effective. Basically, it takes two kinds of Lanterns to defeat the Paling, which sounds a lot like a Black Lantern scenario to me!
This entirely lame battle can’t be salvaged by Sinestro and Natu’s developing relationship. The fact that she saves him from dying shows that he’s already redeemed himself to some degree in her eyes (or else her doctor’s duty to life outweighs any desire to see him die), but inevitably, she’ll be disappointed by his means no matter how well-intentioned the ends. Upset as she gets when he kills an already defeated Paling, she’s sure to be irreversibly appalled if she ever finds out he ordered the destruction of the Paling ship with 400 innocent beings still aboard. He may justify it by claiming, not wrongly, that the beings have become no more than emotionless automatons, but it’s callous nonetheless.
We haven’t seen Morales handle a whole issue on his own since Action Comics, but he’s actually looking pretty good here. Certainly, without the unflattering comparisons to Dale Eaglesham’s clean and precise lines, Morales’ gamboling style is much easier to enjoy. Like many DC artists, his action sequences tend to look posed rather than choreographed, and the way he draws Lantern constructs makes them look more like cheap props than objects made of light. Wright’s coloring makes all the difference here. He understands that it takes some heavy colors to stand up to Morales’ thick linework and emphasize the substance in his figures.
Conclusion: Decent enough for persual in the store, but not enough to actually purchase for personal ownership. Dropped.
Grade: C
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: * Such as the forthcoming Gotham Academy or the renewed Batgirl.
– Rigen proposes, as a victory act, that he and Natu “bed” each other. Please tell me that will never happen.