ComicRelated

Green Lantern: Tales of the Sinestro Corps - ***.5 (out of *****)
DC Comics

The second volume of The Sinestro Corps War sees a variety of oversized one-shots collected, setting the stage for the third and final volume of the war that will be along in a few months.

A lot of the magic is missing in these one-shots, which seemed to tread water even when they were published separately.  As a collected edition, coming out months after the first Sinestro Corps War hardcover and months before the final one, this feeling is even more exaggerated.  The quality of the writing is undeniable, with newcomer Sterling Gates and veterans like Ron Marz all coming out for their time to shine with a variety of DC’s villainous stalwarts.  Ultimately–as seems to be the case with everything Johns has written in the last few years–it all comes down to Superman-Prime, who (aside from making the boy-to-man jump very suddenly) serves as the central villain for the story, even while the Anti-Monitor, long considered the apex of DC’s villainous food chain, stands by largely unused.  As a pawn of Alex Luthor in Infinite Crisis, Superboy Prime provided a serviceable enough powerhouse villain for the needs of the story.  Here, he seems contrived, as though Johns was just trying to pile layer upon layer of general naughtiness into the Sinestro Corps, whether or not the characters worked together.  After all, as every fanboy with a modem pointed out ages ago, if Prime’s motivations are to be believed, his principal enemy would be the Anti-Monitor (you know, the guy next to him in all the pictures here).

Still, all this is nitpicking.  In terms of event publishing, Sinestro Corps War was not only better than the awful Countdown that DC was running concurrently, but flatly one of the best major, “event” stories since Zero Hour.

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