Sinestro Corps. War part 3

Sinestro Corps. War part 3

Green Lantern Corps. #18-19, Green Lantern #25, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps.: Ion, Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps.: Secret Files

Originally released in 2007

Written by Geoff Johns, Peter Tomasi, et al.

Art by Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason, et al.

Since I was so close to the end, I decided to take today to finish up the Sinestro Corps. War.  Despite my previous concerns, it did wind up sticking the landing, giving Sinestro time in the spotlight while making his plan make a lot more sense. (as it turns out, the idea of remaking the universe was a lie)

Sinestro still isn't the biggest threat here (that would be Anti-Monitor, followed by SuperboySuperman-Prime, who seems weirdly overpowered even by Kryptonian standards - he's seemingly immune to Kryptonite, since the only Kryptonite that could weaken him was in his now-destroyed home universe, and he can take on dozens of heroes at the same time, including multiple Kryptonians), but he comes across as the brains of the operation, twisting things so that no matter the outcome of the battle between the Green Lanterns and the Sinestro Corps., he gets something that he wants.

That's not to say that he's not a fighter, though - after using the head of a robotic Manhunter (part of Sinestro's army) to drain the energy from Sinestro's ring, Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner get into a fist-fight with him, with their rings being similarly drained. (this was also the spot where the creators threw in a reference to The Simpsons Movie, though unfortunately, it did not involve a Green Lantern shouting "EEEE-PAAAA!" as Sinestro throws them into a vat of acid)

Green Lantern Corps. #18 focuses on the new Ion, Sodam Yat.  A member of the paranoid xenophobic Daxamite race, Sodam rejects the attitudes of his people.  Much like Kryptonians, Daxamites gain incredible powers under the light of a yellow sun (flight, super strength, virtual invulnerability, laser eyes, etc.).  However, presumably to keep them from overshadowing Superman, they have a much more common weakness - lead.  As well, unlike Kryptonite, which Kryptonians can withstand and survive if they escape it, lead is (going by this) almost immediately fatal.  Once he's exposed to lead, Sodam's Green Lantern Ring is the only thing keeping him alive - once it deactivates, he'll die in moments.

He spends most of the issue fighting Superman-Prime, who continues to be a whiny self-centered jerk.  I'm not sure what his introduction was like (I'm assuming it was more optimistic in tone), but he's completely unbearable at this point. (from what I've read, he was intended as a stand-in for the whiny/unpleasable section of the fandom; while that makes sense based on this, it feels like he never really gets the come-uppance that you'd think he would receive)

This all leads into issue 25 of Green Lantern, the final battle.  While Hal and Kyle fight Sinestro, the rest of Earth's heroes take on the Anti-Monitor (and, once he's beaten, Superman-Prime).  Two factors are given for the Anti-Monitor's easier defeat here compared to Crisis On Infinite Earths: the involvement of the Guardians of the Universe (who were kept out of Crisis On Infinite Earths) and the Anti-Monitor still being weakened as as result of his defeat there.

Even then, it takes an entire exploding planet being dropped on him (with the Green Lantern Rings trapping the explosion so it doesn't destroy the Earth in the process) just to damage his armour.  It's clear that the creators wanted issue 25 to have this big cinematic feel to it, with most of the initial pages being double page spreads, and it works really well at showing off the scope of this event.

By the end, I felt like the event could have been made into a movie (with some trimming - the story/scope would likely need to be narrowed down, and for the sake of simplicity, I'm guessing that Superboy-Prime and the Anti-Monitor would have to be left out unless there was a Crisis On Infinite Earths movie beforehand), and it increased my disappointment that the DC Extended Universe (the movies that stretched from Man Of Steel to Aquaman 2) basically ignored the entire Green Lantern franchise.

The last few issues (Green Lantern Corps. 19, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps.: Ion, and the Secret Files issue) serve as epilogues for the event, though Secret Files primarily serves as a list of character biographies with a short story thrown in the middle.  Green Lantern Corps. 19 focuses on various Green Lanterns throughout the universe, but I didn't recognize most of them, so it was hard to feel much of an attachment to seeing the after-effects that the war had on them.

Meanwhile, the Ion issue focused on the two people who went by that name - Kyle Rayner and Sodam Yat.  It serves to wrap up any remaining questions or plot points from the event, with a fight thrown in the middle for good measure.  Kyle gets some good moments where he grapples with the guilt over what he did while he was possessed by Parallax, and it's revealed (or spelled out to the reader - it had likely been mentioned before in the decades since Daxamites were introduced, but my only exposure to Daxamites was through the Legion of Super-Heroes story "The Great Darkness Saga", so I was unaware of it) how severe lead poisoning is for Sodam Yat and his people.

Secret Files is more like a trivia book, though it introduced me to some unusual Green Lanterns, like a sentient math equation or a being from a blind race that has no concept of colour or objects like lanterns (as such, he claims to be in the F-Sharp Bell Corps.), along with various other Green Lantern-adjacent characters.  Still, it feels like it would have been nice to have this released near the start of the event rather than the end of it, so newcomers have some idea who the characters are.

I enjoyed the event, even if some parts of it dragged on a bit long for my liking. I'm not sure if this is meant to be the high point of Geoff Johns' Green Lantern run or merely the point where things start to escalate (with it reaching higher peaks later). That's the nice thing about coming into a franchise that I'm not familiar with, I suppose - I only have a vague idea about what will happen next.