Sinestro #12

I'd rather have had a Joker Variant.

This is really important work I'm doing. In the future, historians are going to want an unbiased opinion of the material published by DC Comics. They'll stumble upon my site and think, "Enh. Good enough." And that's ignoring all the good I'm doing for the present as well! Keeping my hatred laser-focused on DC Comics keeps me from blowing up bridges and punching every fucking asshole blocking the sidewalk while standing outside of a bar smoking and talking and not realizing how even their friends probably don't really like them very much.

The issue begins with Sinestro and Soranik standing above the reactor at the core of New Korugar. A traitor among the Yellow Lanterns has triggered it to meltdown which will destroy the new home for Sinestro's people. They waste three pages having a useless conversation.

Soranik: "We must evacuate the Korugarians!"
Sinestro: "No need. I will stop the meltdown."
Soranik: "But what if you can't?!"
Sinestro: "I will."
Soranik: "But you might not!"
Sinestro: "But I will."
Soranik: "But just in case you fail..."
Sinestro: "I won't."
Soranik: "You'd put your people at risk...?"
Sinestro: "There is no risk. I will save them."
Soranik: "But just in case you can't!"
Sinestro: "But I can!"
Soranik: "You dick! I hate you! Why am I even here?!"

So now new readers understand that Sinestro is an arrogant bastard who doesn't feel he needs to listen to anybody's advice. Why should he? They're all more incompetent than he is. If he left anything up to anybody else, it would all get done wrong. So he does things his way (which is obviously the best way) and everybody will be happy, dammit. The reader also learns that Soranik is a useless chump who is only hanging around to help her people but just winds up being told, over and over, to shut up by her father.

Of course, if you didn't want to read the first few pages in the most unflattering way possible, you might see it as a moment where Sinestro is having a bit of self-doubt about whether or not he'll ever truly be able to help the Korugarians. He's promised to keep them safe and now he's ashamed that he's placed them in greater danger. He cannot face his own errors so he decides not to tell anybody about the meltdown. If he can take care of it himself, nobody will know he isn't completely in control at all times. And Soranik is just a daughter desperate to get her father to see things differently than he normally does. Saving the Korugarians should not be about him and his shame! It should be about the Korugarians.

After Sorankik storms off, Lyssa remembers that this is the point in time that she is supposed to have a conversation with Sinestro.

Since Lyssa can see the future, the only reason she knows what Sinestro's Plan B is is because Plan A fails. Right?

Soranik heads off to help out the Korugarians without her father's approval. Umaraal, an elder among the Korugarians (maybe. I don't really know who she is!), informs Soranik that Sinestro has never changed and she was a fool to ever think he had. So I think my flattering way of reading the first few pages was me just being fooled into thinking that Cullen Bunn's writing had changed. Apparently Sinestro is just preparing to become a God or something, and he's just waiting for the Green Lanterns to disappear from the universe.

Meanwhile some yellow space sperm named Ranx breaks its way into Warworld to fertilize it.

Afterward, Sinestro goads Soranik into a battle which ends with her becoming a Yellow Lantern. Sinestro's just trying to save her because the Green Lanterns are about to disappear. I think that means he loves his daughter and he should have a Violet Ring now! And since this entire thing was really just a manipulation to get Soranik closer to fear so she could become a Yellow Lantern, maybe Sinestro is the traitor who set the reactor on its course just to toy with his daughter? That's less farfetched than Tim Drake becoming Harvest, right? And I was right about that one too! I mean, I will have been right given enough time. You'll see!

Sinestro #12 Rating: No change. The best part of this issue was that it was called "Daddy Issues." Although Soranik has less Daddy Issues than every single other character in the DC Universe! She doesn't seem like she needs to prove anything to him at all, or that her life is the way it is due to his abandonment of her. She just wants to help her people and keep her father from harming them due to his arrogance and negligence. Sinestro probably has more daddy issues than Soranik does although I don't know what they are. I'm sure there's a story out there somewhere in which Sinestro has a flashback to his awful father which made Sinestro declare he would never be like him and then, later, unwittingly became just like him. That's just the kind of story that DC Comics loves for their characters' backstories.