Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Sinestro #20 Review and *SPOILERS*



Overwhelming Fear


Written By: Cullen Bunn
Art By: Brad Walker, Andrew Hennessy, Livesay, Blond, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: February 17, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh man, have I fallen behind on reviewing this title!  I think the last one I did was issue #16 and that's crazy because I've read them all, but a problem we have over here at Weird Science seems to be that if we haven't reviewed the book before the podcast, it completely slips our minds to do it because not only have we read the book, but we've talked about it ad nauseam.  Hopefully, since I'm actually doing this now, it will lead to a trend where I can get on top of the books I'm supposed to do and we won't have that problem anymore.......... yeah, let's see how long that lasts.  For those of you who have fallen behind on reading this title, let me catch you up a bit.  Sinestro and his Corps have been fighting against The Paling for awhile now and the full force of The Paling has come to Earth for what seems to be the final battle between them and the Sinestro Corps........ Also, it seems that with every issue we get we also have one or more of our Earth heroes or villains becoming a Fear Lantern and helping Sinestro's cause........... Which while it sounds cool has really just become irksome because that seems to be all the series is giving us anymore, these shocking depictions of characters we know becoming one of the Corps, but since it's done over and over, it really does nothing overall.  Let's jump into this issue that is titled "The Fall of Sinestro" and see what goes wrong so quickly after the series was called "Sinestro Rising".  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins just like the last handful of issues, where Sinestro and his Corps are deep in battle against The Paling and the only real difference is that Sinestro is finally taking on The Pale Bishop.  The rest of the issue though...........  Well, it's pretty much the same shit that we've been dealing with for months now.  We've got this great big battle going on and issue after issue Sinestro's big plan was just to throw more yellow rings at Earth, turning heroes and villains into Fear Lanterns and ultimately it did nothing for this story because even though we see these people like Wonder Woman, Superman, Harley Quinn, etc, etc, they do nothing to enhance this story because all they're doing is flying around and fighting The Paling, while the real fight is going on in space between The Pale Bishop and Sinestro.


So we've got this supposed epic battle going on and besides for what I consider the filler pages,where we see the Earth characters holding their own, the rest of the book is played out with small glimpses of the Pale Bishop trying to convert Sinestro into his emotionless horde, while Sinestro thinks back at his life and all he's done........ to I guess catch people up who don't know........ or just to pad the book with Sinestro's monologues to make it feel more meaningful.  The thing is though, we've seen this throughout the series and even Sinestro telling us all about how he feels fear, but masters it.  It's a been there done that situation and only comes off as smoke and mirrors as a way to make this final battle feel more epic than it actually is.  The best part of the book is seeing Arkillo actually being considered a hero on Earth for the people he's saving and him coming off like he hates it, but we all see that glimmer of pride in that monster face of his.


In the end, we finish this battle the same way that we've seen so many Green Lantern battles finished, with the entire Sinestro Corps reciting their oath and channeling their power into Sinestro so he can force as much fear up the Pale Bishop's ass as he can.  Yeah, there's some stuff in this issue about how the Pale Bishop actually has fear within him that Sinestro figured out because he happened to be an archaeologist or some such nonsense, but I didn't want to put it in because it doesn't make any sense to me because the Paling's whole power source and mission and whatnot was all about how they had to be emotionless.  As our issue closes, our Sinestro Corps get the shock of their lives when they see that even though Sinestro survived the battle, that he turned over leadership to the Sinestro Corps to his reluctant daughter Soranik.


That's it for this issue of Sinestro and it really didn't do much for me because it's like I've been reading the same issue for months now and I'm just happy as hell that we didn't have our title character throwing more rings out there because that seemed to be his go to move issue after issue.  Instead though, we get a book that while on the surface looks to be full of action and excitement, comes off as a clip show episode because we're seeing things that we've seen over and over again in this series before finally having Sinestro defeat the enemy, only to give over leadership of the Corps to Soranik without an explanation.  This issue just didn't do anything for me and I don't even know what happened to the Paling converts.  The issue said that "The Pale Vicars Are Dying", but does that mean Mongul too?  Did we just miss the death of Mongul since he was converted but didn't appear in this issue?  There are so many unanswered questions in this book and after having all this build up to the final battle between The Pale Bishop and Sinestro, the ending just came off lackluster.  The best part was definitely the short time we spent with Arkillo in this book and I kind of hope that he just stays on Earth after this because he just comes off as this reluctant hero that doesn't want anyone to know that he loves the praise of being a good guy and I love it.  The art and colors in this were great as always though and since we've been dealing with The Paling since the beginning of this series, you should pick this issue up to complete your story because stopping right before would just be crazy.

Bits and Pieces:

The majority of this issue came off as simply smoke and mirrors to me to try and make the final battle between Sinestro and the Pale Bishop appear to be bigger than it was because from what we get from this book is the equivalent to a clip show episode to a TV show, where we see a bunch of things that we've seen throughout this run.  All of the art though was great as always and the book looked amazing even though I wasn't a fan of the story.

6/10

1 comment:

  1. One of the things that stood out to me in this issue was the over-crowded cast of characters. It seemed like everybody had a ring and they didn't do very much. I saw on Twitter that Cullen Bunn confirmed that #23 would be the final issue of this series. This book started off so good and now I'm worried that the payoff will come across as rushed and underwhelming. I am hoping that there will be a satisfying end to the series.

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