Green Lantern #23.4
Written By: Matt Kindt Art By: Dale EagleshamGreen Lantern #23.4 is a frustrating comic. It misses a lot of the tragedy of Thaal Sinestro in the script by not honing in on how much he believes in the existence of the Green Lantern Corps, so much so that he will betray it to keep it thriving. Korugar’s citizens are hollow and the art goes for a bold theme that doesn’t work and disrupts the framing of panels.
The story offers the origin tale of Sinestro becoming a Green Lantern and ultimately harnessing the power of fear. It hits on the Fascist points well, but doesn’t show the logical progression of Sinestro’s thirst for power, and makes for a very one-sided take on the character.
Sinestro’s relationship with Arin arouses some sympathy in the character, but their relationship isn’t properly tied up, before his recent actions are injected to speed up the story.
Eaglesham’s work has seen much better days, as he’s proven his chops handling DC characters swimmingly on Justice Society of America. His work isn’t particularly stylistic, so the radical decision to display the panels like they’re in the pages of a book confine the space on the page, and distract from the detailed pencils.
Blocking of characters is jarring, particularly in the action scene where we see Sinestro and Abin Sur fight together. Overall facial expressions seem plastic, so the range of emotion isn’t really there.
Green Lantern #23.4 fails to give Sinestro the layered justice and spotlight he deserves. Rather than focusing on a small moment of change in the character to ring true his conviction to fear, his history is jammed into this unsuccessful outing.