Sinestro: Year of the Villain #1 Discussion/Spoilers

[Rakzo]

The Year of the Villain one-shots begin and I wasn't necessarily anticipating this one. I have mentioned before that I'm not really a fan of the direction that Scott Snyder created during his Justice League run for a lot of villains and Sinestro is one of them since I prefer how Geoff Johns handled him. Then again, this was going to be written by Mark Russell which, despite that I was disappointed by his Wonder Twins book, meant that I needed to at least try it and I'm happy to say that he didn't disappoint.

The premise is about Sinestro following the plans that Lex Luthor is preparing concerning creatures named the Paragons who are the masters of a race called the Microns. You might think that this would lead to a typical superhero/cosmic tale but Russell delivers his usual social commentary by depicting Microns as people whose lives are way too short and they devote them to work for people in power. This is classic stuff that you can expect from the writter and he hits all the right notes about how sometimes we follow our jobs to the point that we forget to enjoy life.

That's not the only interesting aspect here since Russell might trick you that he's portraying Sinestro as someone who genuinely wants to help this race but then delivers a twist that presents him as his more typical manipulative self and shows yet another interesting commentary about people of different eras and how they can go into conflict simply because of the interests of someone else. Really good stuff.

Yildiray Cinar handles the art and is pretty solid with a clean style, expressive characters and precise storytelling.

Strong issue. Funny how this was the best Green Lantern-related stuff this week.

[HAN9000]

I HATE what Snyder did to Sinestro to the marrow. It's a relief that Mark Russell wrote a much better Sinestro than Snyder. It could have been a great issue that I can enjoy. But to me, it still reeks of the Ultraviolet bullshit and Snyder's Legion of Doom garbage. What a shame.

[qwertyuiop1998]

Good issue, And glad to see Sinestro finally getting some developments, I mean on JL he been treating like some second-rate villains IMO.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I really enjoyed this, because it played up how much of a master manipulator Sinestro is in an ingenious way. Mark Russell is a clever writer.

[K. Jones]

I liked this a lot. It was sort of like a ... well, slightly twisted take on a one-shot Green Lantern story from the past, where a Lantern has to solve a strange alien case. Of course, Sinestro goes about it in a thoroughly Sinestro way. And his tactics here reminded me thoroughly of Cullen Bunn's Sinestro book.

I'd like to see a little more ... acknowledgement, in Justice League or wherever, of the roots of the Sinestro/Luthor ... friendship. A little more connective tissue. There's a nice throughline from Forever Evil (where loosely, the Legion of Doom kind of came together to ... well, save the day) up through Bunn's Sinestro (and the continuing friendship with Black Adam) up to now, where it made a certain amount of sense that Luthor would want Sinestro on his core team. I think the connective tissue could easily come in the form of a little more ... well, motivation ... Sinestro keeps things pretty close to the chest, tactics-wise, but I'd like to get his POV on why he's working with Lex. There's plenty of material built into the concepts for where the Legion of Doom scheme overlaps with Sinestro's usual motivations, but I'd still like someone to actually spell it out in a creative way that's in-character.

But yeah I appreciated this. Fun social commentary. Fun Sinestro motives. Good art. Neat spacey concepts. Strong issue.

[BruceWayneJr.]

Russell hasn't let me down yet. He is impressive.