GREEN LANTERN: THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR VOLUME 1 (DC)
Written by Geoff Johns & Dave Gibbons, drawn by Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason & Angel Unzeta
Collects Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special #1, Green Lantern #21-23 & Green Lantern Corps #14-15.
Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special was easily my favorite comic book of 2007. It was all just so crazy and well plotted out, plus the art by Ethan Van Sciver might be his best ever. After so much build up we finally got to see how big the Sinestro Corps really was (pretty huge and FULL of uggos), the deaths of some visually recognizable GLs (the big headed guy and the diamond-looking one), Kyle Rayner getting zapped to Qward and bonded with Parallax and the reveal that Superboy Prime and the Anti-Monitor are on Sinestro’s side. But, my favorite piece from the story involves Sinestro Corps member Bedovian who has literally been floating in space for years just to get into the right orbit around Oa to start sharp shooting GLs. There’s something about that element that really speaks to me, I think because it shows not only that Sinestro has been working on a very long term plan, but also that Johns has been as well.

That first chapter really sets the tone for the rest of the series by putting the Green Lanterns on the defensive and basically on their asses. The Guardians are still wrestling with the secret chapter of the Book of Oa and the Blackest Night prophecy, but that doesn’t sit well with Ganthet and Sayd who start branching out on their own going so far as to contact Hal Jordan on the sly to tell him where Kyle is and informing him that he will be a great leader of the Corps once again. If you’re unfamiliar with this collection, it bounces back and forth between issues of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. The GL issues focus mainly on Hal, Kyle, Guy Gardner and John Stewart in their battle on Qward while GLC deals with pretty much all the other Lanterns fighting Yellow Lanterns in space and ultimately on Mogo. Oh, we also see Sinestro appearing on his home planet of Korugar where he talks to Soranik Natu. That will be important later. Also, Salaak tasks Arisia with watching out for rookie Sodam Yat because of his involvement in the Blackest Night prophecy.

The bouncing back and forth is not as seamless as it could have been between the issue transitions, but I love how this story was crafted. At the time, Sinestro Corps War was a surprise hit for DC. You can tell because the story was contained solely in the two existing books and spilled over very little into other books. Even the inclusion of the one-shots in the Tales Of The Sinestro Corps which all came out towards the end of the story’s run seem like last minute follow ups, but more on that later. Compare all that to Blackest Night which went through the two main books, it’s own miniseries, a series of minis starring major chacaters and teams AND tie-in issues in regular ongoing books. SCW had one tie-in and it was in Blue Beetle. Strange.

GREEN LANTERN: THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR VOLUME 2 (DC)
Written by Geoff Johns, Dave Gibbons & Peter Tomasi, drawn by Patrick Gleason, Angel Unuzeta, Ivan Reis, Pascal Alixe, Dustin Nguyen, Jamal Igle & Ethan Van Sciver
Collects Green Lantern #24-25, Green Lantern Corps #16-19
After spending the first volume of the story with the GLs of Earth fighting on Qward and the rest of the GLs fighting the sentient city Ranx, Sinestro Corps Members and the Children of the White Lobe on Mogo (remember we saw Ranx in Green Lantern Corps: To Be A Lantern where he had a run-in with Guy Gardner), the second volume brings everything to Earth where the real action is taking place. The Guardians assume Sinestro and his Corps are attacking Earth because it was revealed to be the seat of the multiverse after 52. There’s a lot of elements in this story that hearken back to Infinite Crisis especially the inclusion of Anti-Monitor and Superboy Prime.

Upon second reading, this second volume is now my favorite of the two. Not only do you get to see the GLC finally defeating Ranx, but the Guardians also reveal the first of ten new laws they’ve written for the book of Oa: Green Lanterns can now kill. We also see the defeat of Parallax, which Sayd and Ganthet split up and put in Hal, Kyle, John and Guy’s lanterns. Of course, that’s not all. We get more information about Sodam Yat and his past on Daxam, we see him throw down with the bratty Superboy Prime, we see Earth’s heroes get involved in the fight and, of course, we get to see the good guys defeat the bad guys. And in the end? Johns and company reveal the rest of the Lantern colors in one form or another including Ganthet and Sayd starting the Blue Lanterns based on Hope and the Black Lantern lantern.

A story like this really relies on its villains and I think they were handled masterfully in this story for the most part. Sinestro reveals that he still believes in the order the Green Lantern Cops can and should enforce in the universe. Even his Sinestro Corp oath talks about order, but he thinks that sentients will only respond to fear instead of any of the other emotions, which is why he orchestrated this entire thing to allow GLs to kill and thus instill more fear in the cosmos. He still wants to be the greatest Green Lantern. Cyborg Superman also reveals that all he wants to do is die. He’s allied himself with beings he hopes are powerful enough to end it all for him. Then there’s Superboy Prime who might be incredibly annoying, but in an understandable way. This kid gave up his regular life and his entire world to come help Superman save the universe in Crisis On Infinite Crisis. Did he get any thanks? Nope, instead he had to watch as the heroes he worshiped got broken, died or got gritty.  Sure he sounds like a message board troll at times, but I think he’s got an interesting point of view. The only one I don’t understand is the Anti-Monitor. He doesn’t really do much in the story, but more than that I don’t understand his role as the Sinestro Corps’ Guardian. For the GLs, the Guardians came together to create the Central Power Battery which gathered all the willpower int he universe. As far as I can tell from this story, though, Sinestro did that himself, so what does the Anti-Monitor do aside from bring power and look scary?

GREEN LANTERN: TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS (DC)
Written by Geoff Johns, Ron Marz, Alan Burnett & Sterling Gates, drawn by Dave Gibbons, Adriana Melo, Patrick Blaine, Pete Woods, Jerry Ordway, Michel Lacombe & Joe Prado
Collects Green Lantern #18-20 and Sinestro Corps Special #1 (back-ups), Tales Of The Sinestro Corps: Parallax #1, Cyborg Superman #1, Superman-Prime #1, Ion #1 and Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps Secret Files #1
I’m not the biggest fan of Tales Of The Sinestro Corps as a collection. Sure, I’m glad DC decided to collect the back-up stories about some of that Corps’ members along with the Secret Files, but I wish the Tales one-shots would have been integrated into the larger collections. I think the whole story could have been told in one huge omnibus or two larger hardcovers (like the Blackest Night collections wound up). While I like having everything collected, I don’t really like having to bounce between books to read the story in a chronological order. For what it’s worth, I read I read Parallax before getting into Volume 2, Cyborg before GL #24, Prime before GLC #18 and Ion after finishing Volume 2.

I’d like the issues put where they belong chronologically because, unlike a lot of the issues thrown together for Blackest Night, these issues are actually somewhat important. If you’ve got no idea who Cyborg Superman or Superboy Prime (I refuse to call him Superman Prime), those one-shots are great infodumps that completely catch you up on what’s going on with those characters. Meanwhile, the Parallax and Ion issues are great Kyle-centric issues written by his creator Ron Marz which act as pretty great book ends for this series, especially Ion where we discover that Kyle’s no longer Ion but now a fellow member of the Honor Guard with Guy. Both issues also pick up threads left over from the Ion 12-issue series (reviewed here).

Overall, I can’t say that this is a perfect comic book crossover. The best ones around feel and seem seamless when it comes to reading from issue to issue (I’m thinking of X-Men: Messiah Complex and Death of Superman for example). It should feel like a movie cutting back and forth between two scenes of action all by the same director, but there are enough differences and odd bits that make it feel like two different films smooshed together, though possibly by two directors who studied under the same master. I’ve still got questions about how things worked, but all in all I still really enjoy the series. The villains are solid, we get great moments for our heroes (Yat fighting Superboy Prime, Hal and Kyle in a depowered fist fight with Sinestro) and the continued expansion of the emotional spectrum and the Lanterns related to them. I think a lot of people expected the end of Sinestro Corps War to definitevly end that story, but like Bedovian, Johns has huge, long term plans that will continue to involve most of the major players in this book which reminds me of the old school 70s and 80s Marvel comics that flow one into another. Great stuff!