While Star Wars posits the reckless student as letting his emotions get the better of him to abandon his principles and become a supervillain, the Green Lantern mythos reserves this heel turn for the mentor figure. This ruptured friendship and mentor-protege dynamic echoes a similar backstory between Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and effectively inverts it. With this friendship set, this makes Sinestro’s inevitably villainous turn all the more heartbreaking as two old friends quickly become bitter enemies as it’s Hal who reports Sinestro’s misuse of his Power Ring on Korugar.
This backstory is deepened with the two forming a friendship during their time on the Corps together, even though Sinestro vocally disapproves of Hal’s more reckless use of his Power Ring. Geoff Johns’ subsequent run on Green Lantern also leans into an element that previous revisions only hinted at, with Sinestro becoming Hal’s mentor when Hal was first inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. The tragedy of Green Lantern and Sinestro Image credit: DC Comics It’s more than just the abuse of power that places Hal and Sinestro at diametrically opposite ends, it’s also their choice in power source. Willpower is the force best-suited to overcome fear while fear is the emotion best-suited to hinder it. The retcon of Sinestro’s Power Ring drawing its energy from fear also places him in direct opposition to the Green Lantern Corps on a primally emotional level. Rebirth’s reveal that Sinestro faked his death and orchestrated Hal’s heel turn all along is a twist that is as organic as it is patently obvious within that wider context. Going rogue with his powers, Parallax does what Sinestro never could by single-handedly dismantling the Green Lantern Corps, culminating in Hal supplanting Sinestro by seemingly murdering him. The fall from grace narrative that Hal experiences, taking on the supervillain moniker Parallax and attacking the Green Lantern Corps in the 1994 story Emerald Twilight by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks furthers this parallel. This is similar to the role General Zod fills for Superman’s rogues’ gallery, as the Kryptonian using his powers to conquer and subjugate rather than for good, or the numerous billionaire counterparts to Bruce Wayne who use their funds and cunning for evil instead of justice, like Black Mask and the Penguin. Sinestro personifies the temptation that comes with the Power Ring, demonstrating how even the most revered among the Green Lanterns has the potential for such an epic fall from grace. The 2004 miniseries Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver elaborates on this, revealing Sinestro’s Power Ring is fueled by fear whereas the Green Lantern Corp Power Battery is fueled by willpower.Īcross Hal Jordan and Sinestro’s combative history, the supervillain’s backstory suggests several different elements that makes him an effective antagonist for Green Lantern. Banished to Qward, a world in the Antimatter Universe, Sinestro teams up with the Qwardians to fashion a Power Ring of his own, projecting energy constructs in yellow, the one color unaffected by the Green Lantern Corps’ Power Rings. Sinestro is introduced by John Broome and Gil Kane in 1961’s Green Lantern #7 as a member of the Green Lantern Corps who abused his powers to conquer his home planet Korugar and rule it with an iron fist. With Sinestro back to his wicked ways and his return seemingly linked to Hal’s own homecoming, here’s a look at the shared antagonism between the two cosmic characters, what makes their dynamic unique in the DCU, and why now is the perfect time to make Sinestro just as important and prominent as any of his DC supervillain counterparts.Ī history of violence Image credit: DC Comics
White lantern ring series#
In the pages of the new Green Lantern comic book series helmed by Jeremy Adams and Xermánico, Sinestro resurfaces for the first time in the new Dawn of DC era. This distinction comes despite the fact that Sinestro appears alongside Green Lantern in virtually every multimedia appearance the emerald superhero has made, including the 2011 live-action film, depicted by fan-favorite Mark Strong.
One of the more underrated nemesis pairings in the DCU is Green Lantern and Sinestro, and while the latter certainly looms large in the Green Lantern mythos as Hal Jordan’s greatest enemy, has never quite gotten the villainous ubiquity in the public mainstream that even counterparts like the Reverse-Flash or Cheetah have enjoyed. The DC Universe has no shortage of iconic superhero/supervillain dynamics, from Superman and Lex Luthor to Batman and the Joker.
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