Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Green Lantern (Vol. 5), Issue #3 – “Sinestro (Part 3)”! In the previous installment, Sinestro uses his own powers to develop a ring for Hal Jordan that has all the powers of a Green Lantern ring except for a) he can’t use it to kill Sinestro, b) nothing can be done without Sinestro’s approval, c) he can’t use it to hurt Sinestro, d) Sinestro can vanquish any currently active power activated by the ring anytime he wants, and e) he can’t use it to kill or hurt or otherwise embarrass Sinestro in any way!

In a nutshell, Jordan is only allowed to use the ring to help Sinestro destroy the army that has enslaved Sinestro’s home planet of Korugar. And that’s it.

So let’s see how that debacle will pan out.

Green Lantern (Vol. 5), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Geoff Johns
“Sinestro (Part 3)”

THE PLACE: Coast City. Wherever that is. Must be on some coast. Carol Ferris returns to her residence after a long date night of putting up with Hal Jordan and his not-gonna-propose-at-all face. Her phone rings and it’s some guy named Tom Kalmaku, even though she thinks it’s Hal. I mean, she has a smartphone, she should be able to see that it was Tom Kalmaku! Kalmaku tells her to turn on the TV, which is airing a news report about Jordan and Sinestro saving the victims of the bridge collapse. Ferris is in disbelief! “Hal would never work with Sinestro again, Tom. Never.”

And yet, there he is, standing alongside Sinestro as if he were Robin to Sinestro’s Batman! Once Sinestro explains that the very corps he initiated on his planet have gone against his instructions and started imprisoning and torturing civilians, he admits to Jordan that he’s able to trust him. That, plus, he can control everything Jordan does! That helps too. “What makes you think I won’t go to the guardians?” Jordan asks. “Because you don’t want to lose that ring.” Sinestro says. Jordan’s probably thinking hell yeah, man, when I wear that ring it feels like 1,000 needles shooting heroin into my dick! He keeps that to himself.

So here’s the deal, fancypants: Jordan helps Sinestro with their little ambush, and Sinestro lets Jordan keep the ring. They both go their separate ways after that. That’s it. No catches. No dick sucking! I was wrong about that one.

Jordan wants to talk to Carol Ferris first, which Sinestro is forbidding. Jordan’s like “I’LL DO WHAT I WANNA” but Sinestro is like “no”, and then Jordan is like “you created this monster in the first place, so fuck you, we do things on my terms once in a while!” and Sinestro is like “no, fuck YOU, and fuck your failing relationship.” And then Jordan slugs him in the face and tells him what’s what.

You may have programmed the ring to prevent me from grabbing your crotch, but I’m going to try my absolute damnedest!

BUT, Sinestro laughs! And that’s a frightening sight. “Jordan, I am better than you. And you already know that.” Jordan loses this round, and he follows Sinestro as he takes off toward Korugar.

Next, we cut to the home of the Guardians of the Universe, aka the Smurf Village. The blue guys are all circled around and ready to discuss the Sinestro matter again, after having wiped Ganthet of all emotional biases that may cloud his judgment. Remember, they brain-zapped him in Issue #1. He’s fine now.

Ganthet takes time to talk about what he has been reflecting upon since their last congregation. The wearers of the rings are chosen because of their “great will”, this he already knew. Duh, we all knew that! Right fellas? Heh heh heh! BUT, Green Lanterns aren’t flawless:

Hal Jordan is all drive, but no foresight.
Sinestro is all drive, but no altruism.

I’m making a note of that, because I’m guessing those are a couple of important points! Jordan doesn’t think ahead, Sinestro does everything for himself. A real comedy of errors is imminent with that combination!

Anyway, the blue guys had once created robot manhunters, the First Army. It didn’t work. Then they created the Green Lantern Corps., the Second Army. That isn’t working for them either. So that leads them to their next plan:

Oh baby, Third Reich time.

This sounds like something that’s going to take up 300 issues and involve constant. exhausting crossovers! Oh boy.

At the moment, Sinestro and Jordan are flying through space. Jordan’s have a gay old time busting up asteroids with his magic ring. They bicker about the seriousness of bearing the ring like a grumpy, old married couple. Sinestro harshes Jordan’s buzz completely by laying out what’s in store when they get to Korugar. “We’ll be faced with over two hundred and twenty corps members in the coming hour. Possibly more if they were able to trigger the central battery into active search status.” OH NO! NOT THE CENTRAL BATTERY! NOT ACTIVE SEARCH STATUS! OH GOD, OH WHY?!

Sinestro holds up his big glowing green lantern and waves it in Jordan’s face. Jordan is confused, and Sinestro insists that the lantern is the key, but they have to wait until sunset. “No. Flying. Off.” he scolds Jordan as if he were a bare-rumped child placed upon his bent knee! Jordan grumbles in agreement, but I bet you the lives of two hundred and twenty corps members (possibly more if they were able to trigger the central battery into active search status!) that Jordan is going to fucking fly off before sunset anyway like an asshole!

Once the sun sets, Sinestro is to fly down to the planet and engage with the corps single-handedly. Jordan is to take the lantern and fly into the yellow central battery with it. The green light will shut down the yellow battery, which shuts down the yellow rings and renders the corps defenseless and whimpering and crying and huddled and shivering and hungry and syphilitic!

Jordan is confused again. Sinestro created this yellow battery so that a green lantern would be its emergency shut-off switch? That means Sinestro had always planned to be a Green Lantern again, even when he was dishonorably discharged from the Green Lantern Academy of Hard Knocks??

But Sinestro gets mad at that:

All I wanted, Hal Jordan, was to sit on my couch and catch up on episodes of Tiger King 2!

I don’t think that quite explains things satisfactorily myself, but hey! When in Korugar, throw some green light where the yellow light is to make the yellow light go away, I always say!

So they prepare to play their parts. Sinestro tells Jordan to dim his green light to black, which is something Jordan has never done before and didn’t know he could do at all. “The guardians don’t like our knowing everything the ring can do.” Sinestro explains. Their suits and eye masks are dark, and they no longer glow like a pregnant lady in the dead of summer!

You made Sinestro go “HRT.” The most disappointed of Sinestro’s noises.

They start sneaking around the planet, which looks like shit. It’s all hazy and red and rundown, it looks like Detroit in the dead of summer! Sinestro reminds Jordan, yet again, to wait until sunset to move. Jordan’s all like “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, I know, thanks Dad” but I still think I’m right about him flying the fuck off before he’s supposed to!

They watch huddled atop a building overhang at the scene below, where the corps is herding shackled civilians like ants at a picnic in the dead of summer! One creepy reptilian-like alien picks a particularly tasty looking young woman to save for eating later, and another corps member insists that these people are not for eating. They say Sinestro needed them stored away! But Sinestro fucking abandoned them, fuck what he wants, I wanna eat that woman!

Jordan’s about ready to fly the fuck off to save the young woman, but Sinestro holds him back and reminds him, yet again, that he is to wait.

But that’s ok, some other Korugarian civilian leaps out to stop the creepy reptilian-like H. R. Giger creature by wrapping her shackle chains around its neck.

Her name is Arsona, and she’s one tough cookie. Once the creature regains composure, it throws Arsona down to the ground. AND A TWIST HAPPENS! It’s Sinestro, fuckin’ Sinestro, who flies down there before sunset! He turns on his ring and bolts right through the creature, opening a giant, gross, bloody, gorey hole in his abdomen with a sickening “SPLAAATCH”! Jordan is bemused. “Not before sunset. Yeah, right.” he mutters as he follows Sinestro.

Give that ugly fucker a pretty Glasgow smile.

Sinestro stands in the middle of the action and declares that any who do not stand down dies. A ruckus is created! Everyone’s all running around screaming now. A man tells Arsona to run away from Sinestro, but Sinestro falters. “No! Arsona, wai-!” but he is interrupted by the crashing-down of the giant yellow central battery.

I didn’t sign up for thiiisss blahrhabb!

“Why does this feel too easy?” Jordan asks himself as he carries his glowing green lantern toward the central battery. A corps henchman stands in his way, but Jordan obliterates the beast with a makeshift green rocket launcher like it was nothin’! Like this was the Ultimate Doom! Like this was Phobos and/or Deimos! I like that game, gotta play it again some day!

Jordan flies into the battery with the lantern. The battery detects its presence and initiates a disintegration process, which looks pretty painful for Hal Jordan. Sinestro looks genuinely alarmed and concerned for Jordan’s well-being, but Jordan screams that Sinestro set him up as he, um, well, he literally appears to be completely eaten up as if he were surrounded by acid.

The last thing we see is Jordan’s barely-skeletal remains still mid-scream, and then a close-up of Sinestro’s eyeballs the size of dinner plates.

“Jordan?” he meekly whimpers.

Final Thoughts

Whoa Mama! This doesn’t look good for Hal Jordan, who has just become a disintegrated corpse! Oopsy-Daisy!

Pretty fucked up stuff going on here! I’m interested in the Sinestro/Arsona backstory. Hell, I’m kind of interested in the Sinestro/Jordan backstory too. It sounds like there’s a ton of history there. I wonder how crazy of a story it is that they’re working together here in a 2011 edition of the story, especially since I read that much of the Green Lantern mythology wasn’t rebooted for the New 52 imprint.

Looking forward to how Hal Jordan is gonna weasel out of this one!