Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Green Lantern (Vol. 5), Issue #6 – “The Other Hero”! I guess it can be considered “Sinestro (Part 6)” but that would be boring! In the previous installment, Sinestro successfully eliminates the yellow corps threat on his planet in less than ten minutes and then sends Hal Jordan packing. Back on Earth, Jordan realizes that he’s been stupid and he begs for Carol Ferris’ forgiveness. She’s just as dumb as he is and accepts it.

The guardians, the little blue gnomes, have their own plan. They’re going to free the First Lantern, who will lead the Third Army, which will render the Second Army (the Green Lantern Corps) obsolete.

But that I probably won’t read about for, like, another six years or something at this rate!

This issue wraps up the Sinestro storyline. Overall, I found the Green Lantern mythology highly enjoyable and you can bet your butt that I’ll dip into the other Green Lantern Family series that the lovely New 52 has to offer! You can bet your butt.

Green Lantern (Vol. 5), Issue #6 [April, 2012]
Written by: Geoff Johns
“The Other Hero”

“AT THE MERCY OF SINESTRO” claims the cover art. A little Green Lantern-style BDSM in Issue #6 I hope. Hubba hubba. Just look at that face. Sinestro ain’t got no safe words!

Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris are on a lovely date at the COAST CITY AERONAUTICAL MUSEUM! And it looks like we have a different artist for this issue: Mike Choi, instead of Doug Mahnke, and it’s noticeable right away because Hal and Carol look like happy little wholesome PBS Kids characters that aren’t mad at each other like they usually are.

It’s implied that they’ve been fucking, so that’s nice. Carol excuses herself to go poop in a toilet, so Hal waits under a Boeing B-59 which I don’t think is a real type of plane at all. As Jordan makes his way over, he hears a loud, belligerent argument in a mechanic’s garage. One man had caught another man stealing and selling parts, and he plans on testifying in court! The other man, the scummy thieving man, threatens the first man with a wrench to the head causing certain death!

So Jordan intervenes and threatens the scary wrench guy. He smiles like a Ken doll while doing this, which undercuts the intimidating effect that he was going for. Wrench Guy gets his three cronies, so it’s four against one. Jordan is itchin’ for a fight! Carol is still making bathroom poops.

Thus spoke the mouse.

Long story short, Jordan takes them all out and the Wrench Guy is bleeding from his mouth on the floor. He looks pretty dead, actually, or at least dying. He probably should get some medical attention immediately.

Hal Jordan steals the dying guy’s tie because his own tie got ripped off his neck in the scuffle. Carol finally finishes pooping and she comes back out to see him. He suggests getting the hell out of there because airplanes are dumb. Carol can’t get used to this new not-fighting-red-or-yellow-light non-ring-wearing Hal Jordan. It’s weird and strange and unnatural! “I don’t need to be Green Lantern,” he says unconvincingly, “I don’t need to be some kind of ‘super hero’ anymore.”

Some kind of ‘super hero’. Uh huh.

Meanwhile, on SPACE SECTOR 1417: THE PLANET OGORO, a hunched-over old man creature is pulling a cart through a shitty part of town. He arrives at his hovel, where the Glorious Sinestro is waiting. “I find it hard to believe I’m looking at the once great Starstorm.” Sinestro says, hovering decadently in Starstorm’s presence. Starstorm is like “gaaahhh, oh fuck, you again? No, please, come on man! Get out of here! Goddamnit, you.”

You’ve already taken everything from me! My money! My family! My collection of solid gold lightbulbs! Everything that matters!

Luckily, the Great Sinestro isn’t interested in Starstorm. He’s looking for someone named Lyssa Drak, who is somewhere on Ogoro. She’s got a relic that’s messing with Sinestro’s ring GPS system! Sinestro conjures up a battle helmet for Starstorm and tells him to shake a leg, they’re going to find Lyssa Drak together!

Starstorm says no. And Sinestro says “the fuck you say?” And Starstorm says “You told me you’d kill me if I wore this again, so nuh uh, fat chance pops.” And Sinestro says “Huh. Oh yeah. I did. That’s interesting. But I’m gonna kill you if you DON’T wear it, so step on it!”

But Starstorm still doesn’t budge, and he asks Sinestro to just kill him already and be done with it. Sinestro says he’ll kill his friends, but Starstorm doesn’t have any friends. He’ll kill his family then, but they’re all gone. Sinestro is quickly running out of leverage. “I have NOTHING because of you!” Starstorm whines. His hair is scraggly and gross like Heath Ledger’s Joker, and, to me, he certainly doesn’t look like anybody holding out on Sinestro here.

But Sinestro is ready for this one. He tells Ol’ Starry Storm that he is, in fact, THE KEY in taking out Lyssa Drak! So put the fucking helmet on.

So Sinestro has to jam the helmet on Starstorm himself, and then he conjures up a big green hand to comically drag the wretched little imp off with him.

Oh baby. Do you read a lot of Books of various other colors too? Let’s talk about it over some coffee after work.

Off to a large fortress we go! After Sinestro tells Starstorm that he is but a shell of the man that he used to know and revile, Starstorm admits that Sinestro himself turned him into a quivering little coward. “You have no idea what it means when everyone loses faith in you.” Starstorm tells him. This is when some blue seductress with long, raven hair uses some yellow-light chains to bind Sinestro’s and Starstorm’s hands and legs and ropes them into her lair. She must be Lyssa Drak! She’s wearing a leather two-piece. This is where the BDSM happens, no question about it!

She knows all about Sinestro’s failures on Korugar, and now she wants more tales of failures! She’s got a big book, the Book of the Black, in which EVERYONE’S SORDID STORIES OF WOE AND FAILURE are kept forever! HA HA HA HA HA!!

Starstorm is perfect for the book as well! Look at him, the whimpering, pulpy pile of crab shit and barnacles! The saddest of sacks! “Your tales of self-pity will be delicious!”

Lyssa Drak feeds on bad memories and stories like a real Disney villain.

“TRAITOR! You betrayed me to Krona for this sacred book!” bellows Sinestro. Whoa, hold on there, buddy! Airing your dirty laundry like this in front of your readers? The only krona I know buys you a lot of pickled herring in Stockholm, sir.

He tries ripping a page out of the book, but the wispy, smoky electricity that emanates from the tome makes a bee-line right for his eyeballs! There, he sees a horrific vision of the future. A future where he and Hal Jordan team up to defeat the guardians as they attempt to raise the Third Army. Sinestro dies in a puddle of purple, gooey Korugarian blood! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Sinestro is distraught. He becomes a whimpering, pulpy pile of goose feathers and duck eggs! Even Starstorm has to laugh and mock now! But Drak takes the wind out of his sails quickly, telling him that she knows how he dies too: he’s going to push his little cart into his smelly hovel one last time and then kill himself. lol

So now Sinestro tries to buoy Starstorm’s spirits. “This is your chance, Starstorm. Overcome fear, or give up and die.”

This is supposed to be a NON-CONTACT sport, ya pansy.

Starstorm screams and cries and twists in his chains. “Please don’t hurt me!” he yells in large, flamboyantly bold comic book font. Lyssa Drak cackles. Sinestro is getting impatient, floats on over to Starstorm and throws his helmet to the ground.

When the helmet connects with the ground, a massive beam of white light bursts around the room and Lyssa Drak is blasted through the adjacent wall. “You’re lucky I don’t slit your throat and watch you bleed out, Lyssa. After what I’ve learned from that book…I may need you alive.” I don’t think she hears him. She looks unconscious. More alive than that Wrench Guy, though.

Sinestro tells Starstorm that he’s no Hal Jordan, and it seems Hal Jordan is the living example of hitting rock bottom and still hoisting himself out of it? Pretty sad. Sinestro grips onto the Book of the Black flies away into space while Starstorm screams at him, DEMANDING to know who the hell Hal Jordan is.

Speaking of Hal Jordan, he and Carol are getting out of bed in the morning (likely after a bit of daybreak fuckin’), when suddenly a green ring whips around the room and finds itself on Jordan’s finger. Carol’s like “what the fuck are you doing, dear?”, but Jordan, now in full Green Lantern garb, is miserably trying to pull it off to no avail. “Because it is my will.” declares a floating green figure outside the bedroom window (hint: it’s Sinestro). He tells Jordan to start moving. Now! He needs him again, damnit!

“I’M DONE BEING A GREEN LANTERN!” waaahhh! That’s Hal Jordan.

Thus spoke the mouse!

“No Jordan. Unfortunately, you are far from done.”

That’s Sinestro.

Final Thoughts

That’s right, Hal “Michael” Jordan. Get out of MLB-related “retirement” and into your basketball shoes, because your post-retirement career is going to be the best you’ll ever be! Time to take out the guardians! Pack a sandwich, motherfucker.

Green Lantern Vol. 5 continues when I come back around to it during Trump Jr.’s son’s daughter’s inauguration.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Green Lantern (Vol. 5), Issue #5 – “Sinestro (Part 5)”! In the previous installment, Hal Jordan doesn’t die in the battery. It rejects him and spits him out whole when it discovers that he’s not Sinestro. He gets thrown in a cell and his power runs out.

Sinestro eventually gets thrown in a cell too after a session of torture renders his green ring completely unscratched. The cell contains a bunch of civilians, including Arsona, who hate Sinestro’s fucking guts. Jordan gives Sinestro the idea to create a whole pile of green rings for his people to use in a fight against the corps. He does so successfully…

…but they declare that they can now get their revenge…

…against…

…

…HIM! AAAHHHHHH!!!

So let’s continue.

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

Finally, Hal Jordan is on the cover. TWO AGAINST A THOUSAND! Sinestro got Jordan entirely on his side in less than, what, 10 hours or something? And why does Jordan get a mask and Sinestro doesn’t? Is Jordan planning on robbing a bank? Is Sinestro anti-mask?? So many questions.

Arsona still isn’t done taking the piss out of Sinestro. She just keeps going on and on about betrayal, trust, dictatorships, accountability, abuse of power, and it’s making Sinestro very sad! He’s frowning, the poor little guy!

“But now the people you put under your boot heel will execute you with the power you used against us. FIRE!” she instructs her crew of newly-appointed Greenish Lanterns. Sinestro stands there hunched like a tired dog, ready to just take it. You know, take it like a dog. He’s really cruising for a bruising! He’s coasting for a roasting! He’s scouring for some overpowering! He’s tunnelling for a pummelling! He’s journeying for a gurneying! He’s-

The Korugar Vincent Price has bested us once again!

Do you think Sinestro is SO FUCKING DUMB that the rings HE MADE HIMSELF would be able to harm him whatsoever? Didn’t you talk to Hal Jordan?! He tried that shit already! Issue #2! Old news! Catch up!

You are now able to crack the code with your secret decoder ring. Ready? BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE.

Arsona is in furious denial and tries to cheerlead her group into trying again, but Hal Jordan butts in to say that they need to conserve their powers for the real threat. He doesn’t say anything about having already tried destroying him a few hours ago with a Sinestro-crafted ring, which I would think is very important information for Arsona (who is now so angry there are tears running down her face) and the other Korugar civilians. She gives it everything she has and tries blasting him again! And it works!

Jordan is thrown back from his cell wall. Sinestro is untouched, and Arsona is finally told that the ring can’t harm its creator. Arsona goes back to yelling at him about what he did, which is getting old for even Hal Jordan at this point. Jordan butts in again to explain how much he hates Sinestro’s guts and how many times Sinestro has already ruined his piss-stained life, but now they share a common goal and everyone needs to be on the same goddamned page! OK?! Christ…

Sinestro agrees that time’s a-wastin’, so he instructs his people to fire when ready as he prepares to open the cell door. Hal Jordan, in essence, asks him “with what, your dick?” since the rings are useless against them. Nope! Sinestro’s got a Plan B.

Back outside, Professor Insidd is trying to figure out how to discharge Sinestro’s lantern, which keeps hovering and glowing and taunting the lot of them. Some corps goons show up to tell the professor that the lantern may be interfering with their own yellow rings, since they’ve been working like shit ever since Sinestro got here. Professor Insidd says “NONSENSE, POOPYPANTS!” and peers directly into the lantern. It blasts a hole right through him, severing his top half in-twain! Gross!

Then the lantern flies off! The surviving corps members chase after it! You can tell the lantern is laughing to itself! HA HA HAAAAA!

It blasts a hole in the cell, freeing the prisoners, but the yellow corps dudes are already running toward them before they have a chance to walk on out.

Hahaha. “NO FEAR”. Let’s listen to Lamb of God and watch some Motocross.

As the Korugarians start blasting their way to freedom, Sinestro throws Jordan the lantern and tells him to join in on the fun!

The rings will only last another minute. If Sinestro tried to make them any stronger, the extra strain on the rings would’ve broken them. “You can’t break the ring.” Jordan insists, but Sinestro tells him that he’s broken two rings already in his day!

The Korugarians keep fighting. Sinestro just needs enough of a distraction to get the lantern back into the giant yellow central battery. Jordan’s like “ARE YOU BATSHIT LOONEY, SIR?”, but Sinestro tells him that he fucked up and did it wrong in the first place! Always the fuck-up, that Hal Jordan! At least that’s what I’VE learned here through my Green Lantern adventures.

But, ho hum, I guess it’s not entirely Jordan’s fault. After all, he was wearing a Sinestro ring and he was carrying Sinestro’s lantern. We, the attentive reading audience, already know that the battery spit Jordan out in one piece once it realized that he wasn’t who it thought he was. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to venture back in.” Sinestro asks haughtily.

The Korugarians’ rings are starting to vanish. Sinestro explains that some yellow energy needs to be siphoned into the lantern in order for the battery to think that it needs to go into survival mode…so, if Hal Jordan and Thaal Sinestro both close their eyes and try reaallllyy hard, the battery will start siphoning energy from the yellow rings to compensate! This sounds like plot hole shit to me! Bah.

No way, sucker. This meat’s staying alive.

So as one of them leaps toward Arsona with a killing strike, the yellow rings suddenly crackle and burst into blinding waves of yellow light. The corps members, all of them, lie still on the ground. Smoldering.

Sinestro claims they aren’t dead, just in a forced coma state until the battery is activated again. Which he won’t ever activate again. “How do we know that?” asks the ever-skeptical Arsona. But the rest of her clan, they’re hootin’ and hollerin’ and cheering him on. “HOORAY FOR SINESTRO!” “YAY, SINESTRO!” they all cheer, carrying on like a bunch of loser Whos from Whoville!

“I do not deserve your praise or trust, little ones.” Sinestro says with an air of condescension and scorn befitting of a man who actually does believe he deserves every little ounce of praise and trust that he can wring dry from these peons. He does, with sincerity, promise his people that he will rid the planet of the yellow corps, as well as the battery that energized their slavedriving rings. He apologizes to Arsona one last time, perhaps hoping to get a little nookie for the road, but alas! “No, Sinestro. The children may be too young to remember, but we are not. Go. And if you ever return to Korugar, you will return as our enemy.” she says with the finality of a woman who once loved this bastard about 100 years ago and is too hurt to continue loving such a bastard.

Sinestro and Hal Jordan fuck off from Planet Korugar, with Sinestro single-handedly hauling a giant cargo consisting of the battery and the sad-sack comatose yellow corps members. Jordan offers his assistance, but Sinestro knows that the last person the guardians want to see is Hal “Beats Up Actors While They’re Filming Movies” Jordan.

lol

They have a heart-to-heart, but they both hate each other’s guts and aren’t afraid to speak aloud about it. Jordan tells Sinestro that saving his planet is far from redemption. A whole history of killing innocent people, murdering other Green Lanterns, yaaawwwnnn. Get over it, Hal, and get your bone on like we all know you want to! No shame!

Sinestro’s not going to waste one more second with Hal Jordan at this point. “Our pact is over, go the fuck home” he tells him in kinder words. Hal gets to keep the ring, as promised, but Sinestro never said anything about giving him a lantern to charge it! Ha! So long sucker! He flies away into outer space, and he slingshots Jordan back to Earth like the piece of space junk that he is!

Jordan crashes into a pile of garbage in a dark alley, and that’s an lol from me.

“I have to find a way to charge this ring. I need to get a lantern. It’s all I have.” Jordan cries pathetically. “It’s all I…want.” he finishes with a dumbass look on his face.

He runs over to the airport to meet up with Carol Ferris. She gets out of her car and immediately mentions seeing him on TV with Sinestro cavorting around as Green Lanterns during that whole busted bridge incident. Before she can finish asking him what the HELL is going on, he kisses her and asks her to let him talk.

I’m glad he doesn’t recap the entirety of the last five issues right here and now! He cuts to the chase! But really, he tells her the “important part”, which to him (and NOT to me!) is that he conjured up a construct of her in his holding cell. It was the last thing he wanted to see before his ring ran out of green juice.

“Just give me a second chance.” he begs of her.

“Technically, this would be your tenth.” she responds, grinning, even though we all know that Hal’s tenth will be far from his last.

Blech.

FINALLY, on the planet of the Powerful Smurfs, the guardians are discussing Sinestro’s victory over the yellow corps. First they were able to get rid of Hal Jordan, and now they successfully got rid of Sinestro and his army of drooling yellow energy parasites!

“It is time to proceed to the chamber of shadows and free the First Lantern!” one declares.

For you see, it is the First Lantern that will lead the Third Army. And it is the Third Army that will replace the Green Lantern Corps.

Yeah, you and what army?? … oh

“WE ARE GUARDIANS. WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED.”

Final Thoughts

Someone’s gotta try stopping those guardians! They seem bad!

Some sources call this the end of the Sinestro storyline, but au contraire! The next issue will wrap it all up! Look at how much I know about comic book storylines! I’m really a Comic Book Kinda Guy.

Until next time, keep your green light lit. Or something!