Sinestro #4

Sinestro does not enthuse me if he's going to be Hal Jordan's friend. I hate Hal Jordan as much as Sinestro hated him in the Superfriends cartoons. I want that Sinestro back!

I suppose I still have that Sinestro since he's seen choking the shit out of Hal Jordan on the cover here. I guess what I really want is a less complicated Sinestro. I just want a guy that hates Hal Jordan for the sake of hating Hal Jordan. Unless he was really only motivated by play since his battles with Hal usually revolved around giant baseball bats and gloves, or tennis rackets and horribly deadly spiked tennis balls.

I didn't want to begin reading this comic book because I dislike it so much, so I decided to brave my comic book store and pick up my comics even though the place was soon to be packed with people lining up to meet Bendis, Fraction, and DeConnick. And some other lesser names that might not actually be lesser names but I didn't recognize any of them. Luckily I beat the rush and got out of there before I was consumed in the flames of fandom.

Having survived the comic book store since nobody recognized me, I came back home and still didn't want to read this stupid comic book. It's boring! And the antagonists are just a revamped version of a revamped DC version of a revamped DC version of the Star Trek Borg! And guess what?! They're so powerful that even Sinestro is worried that his army won't be enough to defeat them! What?! They must be crazy powerful if a narcissistic, egomaniac like Sinestro doesn't believe he's more powerful than they are!

I'd be perfectly safe from these guys because I don't give a shit about this story.

The Paling are--get this!--immune to the Yellow Rings! Go fucking figure! Every single fucking antagonist that any of the stupid fucking ring bearers have gone up against since The New 52 began have been immune to the light energy! The most powerful weapons in existence and, so far, they have sucked ass. They have not only sucked ass, they have fed laxatives directly to their enemies and waited for the shit waterfall to plummet into their waiting maws. Can we get a writer to figure out a challenge for any of the Lanterns that still lets them use their rings as weapons?

Here's the problem with The Paling. If they were truly without emotion, they wouldn't care that other beings feel emotion. They betray themselves by caring! A truly emotionless Paling would be sitting on a ratty sofa at the ass end of the universe smoking a bowl while he ignores his responsibilities. I guess that doesn't make for a great antagonist though. Oh well! I've bought into worse stories in The New 52!

"If I would just...smoke one bowl, and open one bag of Cheezy Poofs, and play just one game of Mario Cart...."

Sinestro has a momentary hallucination where he sees Hal Jordan taking everything he ever had. I'm not sure how that's supposed to make Sinestro unemotional. The Paling are doing it wrong! You don't try to humiliate somebody, or scare somebody, or show somebody naked pictures of sexy creatures to get them to lose their emotion! What you do is calm them down, sedate them, put them in a medical coma. Make them watch a few episodes of The Chew until their brains are as numb as the hosts of that stupid fucking show. Why are people so fascinated with watching other people cook food? I understand when Gordon Ramsay is involved because it's always nice to hear some asshole get called a donkey eighteen hundred times. Other than that? Boring! Just shove food in me and I'm good but don't make me watch other people jerk off people that are cooking for them. Actually, I'd watch that cooking show in a heartbeat.

What I'm trying to say is Sinestro just gets angrier. And if I remember my kindergarten years correctly, anger is an emotion! The Paling suck at their religion.

See how they only use periods? That proves that they're unemotional.

Sinestro gets the upper hand when Soranik enters the fight and The Paling suddenly have to protect themselves against the emotion of willpower. Wait a second! If I'm remembering my kindergarten years correctly, willpower wasn't an emotion at all! I never once heard about The Willpower Little Puppy! So The Paling aren't just bad at their religion, they're just fucking idiots as well. While The Paling are confused (unless that's an emotion too! Now that I've learned Willpower is an emotion, I'm not sure what's an emotion and what isn't!), Sinestro drills a hole in one of The Paling priests. This causes the other Paling to almost use an exclamation point right before they die.

Sinestro checks out The Paling's ship, learns their plans to Pale the Universe, then blows it up.

Remember how Cullen Bunn thought a galaxy was equal to a universe? Ha ha! He'll never live that one down!

On the way home, Sinestro meets up with Hal Jordan and thinks the stupidest thing he can possibly think.

Truest friend and most hated enemy? It sounds like you guys are married! Ha ha! That was a sitcom-level marriage joke and I should probably apologize for it. I'm much better than that! Sometimes.

Sinestro #4 Rating: No change. The Paling really aren't much different than The Third Army or Volthoom or Relic or The Manhunters or whatever is cy-Borg-ifying all the heroes in Futures End. I guess when DC finds a plot they love, you can't pry it out of their pale, weak fingers. I bet that's because everybody in the offices at DC Comics are pale mutant vampire people! They're all the same which is why they don't understand representation and diversity. Why would anybody want to be different? "JOIN US," they moan in bewilderment and pain. "JOIN US!"