Some thoughts about Sinestro: Year of the Villain #1

Can Sinestro save an entire race?

Lex Luthor has handled Sinestro the mission of eliminate a threat and to do so, he will have to give a new meaning of life to a whole planet.

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 works 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.

Pretty good read, one of my favorites this week.