Welcome to Sinestro Week

It came and took over our lives, like heroin or Despotellis.

It drives us to turn, on average, 25 percent of the COTW posts at okayplayer.com (plug!!) into shrines. It drives us to graphic design. It drives us to poetry.

It is Sinestro Mania, and it has laid low the Prep Time Posse.

image courtesy of this guy

It’s not our fault. Even the Marvel Zombies among us recognize that since the Sinestro Corps one shot dropped, Dat ‘Stache has been the best villain in superhero comics by a country mile. I spit on your Red Skull. Black Glove couldn’t even keep his chopper in the air, assuming that was even him. As good as Final Crisis has been, Darkseid ain’t got face time. Oh, and then there’s the Skrulls and the “Dark Illuminati.”

*does asshole Basaglia-inspired Wop of Geoff Johns Victory*

I defy you to find one issue of Green Lantern in which Sinestro appears from the last two years in which Sinestro isn’t a complete and utter bad ass. As I’ll go into later this week, there is not a more quotable villain than Sinestro. EVERY ISSUE has two to three Sinestro lines that are just the coldest shit imaginable. What makes the words work is Sinestro’s utter craziness/evil. He basically raped Kyle, but Johns made it less gross and more upsetting than the Dr. Light nonsense. He just toasted a Laira on the verge of redemption. He owns Jordan’s psyche. Hell, he owns THE GUARDIANS’ psyche.

And it’s clear he is Geoff Johns’ biggest mancrush in the whole DC Universe. Johns gets Sinestro like no other writer going right now gets a character, and I’m including Morrison and Superman.

*ducks a Shoe to Suffice*

If you doubt it, pick up In Brightest Day, the recent trade in which Johns compiles his favorite GL stories. The first story shows Sinestro’s first appearance (without a ring!!). Johns understands that Sinestro’s monologue at the end of this first issue about the power of evil contains his entire ethos. Johns understands that there is just enough sense in what Sinestro believes that you can let your guard down and think that you and this guy share some goals. As soon as you do, Sinestro puts a ray of yellow through your chest. Johns’ Sinestro might be a necessary evil, at least if you believe Ganthet. But he is definitely, purely, awesomely evil.

So welcome to Sinestro Week. I call on the Prep Time Posse to rise to the challenge, drop a boatload of ‘Nestro propaganda, and recharge the movement.

And if we don’t?

Look at that, reader.

Another broken promise.

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Black Adam 101

Yes, because throwing rocks at a superhero is a well thought-out, worthwhile attack plan. Right.

In anticipation of all the head-squishing fuckery sure to go down in Justice Society of America #23 next week, here's something a lot of JSA/52 readers and Black Adam fans have probably never seen: his first (and only, as Geoff Johns unfortunately learned during research for JSA) Golden Age appearance.

"The Mighty Marvels Join Forces" was the main story from the first issue of Fawcett Comics' The Marvel Family series, published in December 1945. It features Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Junior, and Uncle Marvel - yes, there really was an Uncle Marvel - banding together to fight Black Adam - whom their mentor, the old wizard Shazam, created 5000 years ago and conveniently waited until now to tell the Marvels about. Like most Golden Age Captain Marvel stories, it was written by Otto Binder and drawn with dot-eyed, potato-nosed precision by C.C. Beck.

Read up over @ Flickr.

(Incidentally, the backup story featured the Marvels adopting and taking care of a foundling baby they dub "Baby Marvel". I shit you not.)

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DARKNESS IS SPREADING! (c) Dave Chappelle as Rick James

During the early '90's, comics went through what can best be described as "The Dark Age," where following the widespread acclaim of "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen" in the '80's, every superhero was a semi-psychotic bad-ass who took no shit from the criminal element. After several missteps, the fans and creators realized complex, realistic characters are more than just stubble and cigars. However, now that superhero movies are big business, we're about to see that same trend hit the bigscreen.

After the kajillions Warner Brothers made on "The Dark Knight," they now want the next Superman movie to be darker.

"You want a piece of me, bitch?"

I'm not even a big fan of Supes, but dude deserves better. A Superman movie should be about as dark as "Spider-Man 2," maybe less. The film could increase the action without being a near rated-R frown fest. And last time I checked, "Iron Man" made a damn nice chunk of change last summer, and it was mostly shits and giggles.

Some characters like Batman, the Punisher, or Wolverine are suited for dark stories. The movies tend to go awry by having the heroes kill or let the villain die. I understand the general movie audience is used to seeing the bad guys get theirs after 2 hours, but there is a line. Batman tying a bolo around the Joker's leg to a stone gargoyle - wrong. Daredevil letting the rapist who beat him in court get run over by a subway train - wronger. Bats leaving R'as Al Ghul on a runaway train - wrongest. There are other ways to tie up the story without having the villain die, or at least have them die from something of their own doing (I don't know, getting stuck with their own bomb, for example).

Am I being too much of a stickler for the rules set by the comics' version? Maybe. But I just feel if a character/story is good enough to adapt, it's good enough to adapt right.

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