Blackest Night

If you haven’t read the Sinestro Corps (but you are intending to) you should stop reading this post because there will be SPOILERS. I’m sorry to for two posts in a row talking about reveals but yesterday was catch up and today I just had to write about the Sinestro Corps #1, had to. Tomorrow there will be a post that doesn’t give so much away – promise.

So just a day shy of being a week behind, I read finally read the comic. Whoah. There was so much there, so much that guides and explains and reveals, that I’m having trouble getting my head around it. So let’s start from the very beginning.

Remember back in Brave New World when the newly revealed Monitor said this?

I sure do and for months I’ve been questioning what he meant, why New Earth was so important. Well, now Geoff Johns has showed us why.

New Earth is the linchpin around which the other 51 survive. If it goes so does everything else. It’s kind of great the layers of importance that DC is building into this new crisis. The universe needs New Earth and New Earth needs Ray Palmer and Ray Palmer needs to be found by the very anomalies that are threatening the existence of everything. Layers upon layers.

Next we come to this panel.

A boy lost in a field. In a Newsarama interview the other day Ron Marz was quoted as such when talking about the Parralax one-shot:

“Yeah it’s a very internal story…yeah. I guess I’ll leave it at that—it’s there for the audience to see what Kyle is going through. By that extension it’s kind of what Hal went through as well when he was Parallax. I kind of liken it to being on a trip that’s entirely on auto-pilot. Kyle isn’t in control of where he is going or what is happening—all he can do is watch… The Parallax one shot is really more of a chance, very literally, to be inside Kyle’s mind as he’s going through all this stuff.”

Five dollars says his mind takes the form of a boy lost in a field. Now, I did my whole Internet searching thing for the painting that might have been the impetus for the painting that Kyle was talking about. I came up with this painting by Monet.

A boy lost in a field, waving to someone unseen. The essay I was reading about it described the painting as “whimsical” but I’m not sure that is right. The kid looks really lonely to me and for all we know he is waving at nothing. There is another painting by Monet with a similar title as this one.

Now a new boy in a new field has a mother. Here is my second five-dollar bet. Kyle Rayner, lost in his own subconscious, will be freed by his mother. Her appearance will give him the willpower to reject the Parralax parasite, to take that floating space whale back into his body, become Ion and whoop some yellow ring powered ass.

At least I hope so. With Bart Allen’s death, DC might be starting on the path of killing the third generation heroes. Once you get started on that path it seems pretty easy to keep it going. I like Kyle; I hope he sticks around.

Next we get to the big splash page of all the Sinestro Corps. Van Sciver did a freaking number on this one; let me tell you. It is just awesome, all the aliens standing around, looking mean. But then in the corner there is this guy.

Oh man! Santa Claus went and got ripped. Ho Ho Ho.

Finally, we get to this page, the biggest reveal of them all.

The Anti-Monitor, Guardian of the Sinestro Corp. There have been a few people who have scoffed at my claim that since the Monitors are back so must be the Anti-Monitor. To those people I say:

Told you so.

Even though it felt like every panel put me on my ass, there was one sequence that totally knocked me out. It was like in Die Hard when Bruce Willis wraps that chain around a chain around Karl (the Fabio looking dude) and slams him into a wall. You just kind of jump out of your chair.

John Stewart. Yippie-Kay-Yay Motherfucker.