The Yellow Lantern

Written by GL

Everyone needs to have an arch-villain. Like I've said many times, a hero is only as good as his or her villains. Superman has his Bizzaro, the Batman has his ever-annoying Joker, and the Green Lantern...? The Green Lantern is forced to face off against the evil Sinestro.

Sinestro is a native of the planet Korugar in space sector 1417 (as numbered by the Green Lantern Corps. He was initially considered to be one of the greatest Green Lanterns, but as the years passed, he became more and more obssessed not simply on protecting his own people but on lawfully controlling their society. Eventually he concluded that the best way to accomplish this was to conquer them, and to rule the planet as a dictator.

When Hal Jordan joined the Corps, Sinestro was assigned to be his instructor. Jordan was horrified at the way Sinestro ruled his people like a dictator, though Sinestro maintained that his total rule was necessary to protect his people from alien forces. As such, while repelling the alien warlords known as the Khunds from attacking the planet, Sinestro's people rebelled. When Jordan called for help from the other Green Lanterns, Sinestro's dictatorship was exposed and he was forced before the Guardians for punishment. Katma Tui, the leader of the rebellion who had felt that Sinestro's control stopped her people from growing as a society through contact with other alien races, was recruited as his replacement.

The Guardians decided to punish Sinestro by banishing him to the 'antimatter universe'. In particular, he was banished to the alien world of Qward. By exiling him to a world ruled by evil and ruled by beings who hated the Guardians and the Green Lanterns, they hoped this would change Sinestro. This proved to be a major miscalculation. Sinestro instead was taken in by the Weaponers of Qward. The Weaponers were a group of warriors and scientists who hated the Guardians as much as Sinestro did and the two became allies. The Weaponers offered to help Sinestro gain revenge on the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians.

Creating a yellow power ring for him to use, they sent him back to his home universe to seek his revenge. Sinestro quickly became a powerful nemesis toward the Green Lantern Corps, partially due to the fact that their power rings cannot directly affect anything yellow. Despite this, skilled Green Lanterns like Jordan always found ways to defeat him.

Before the Guardians took a leave of absence from their universe, they constructed an inescapable prison for Sinestro and thousands of others on Oa. However, Sinestro's cunning prevailed once again and he managed to free himself through the mental manipulation of the Mad God of Sector 3600. Now wielding nearly unlimited power, Sinestro murdered entire star systems until he was finally subdued by the Green Lantern Corps of Earth. Now guilty of multiple acts of genocide, Sinestro was put on trial again by the assembled membership of the Green Lantern Corps. Finding him guilty, they condemned him to death and executed him, not realizing this activated a failsafe system within the Central Power Battery on Oa - this device caused the Central Battery to be destroyed should ever a Korugarian male (like Sinestro) be killed by a Guardian or their agents Ironically, Sinestro's death then resulted (temporarily) in what he always sought to achieve in his life; the destruction of the Corps. He had also managed to cheat death itself by transferring his consciousness into the Central Power Battery, where he made a startling discovery about the ancient Yellow Impurity within the Green Lantern's light.

The yellow impurity turned out to be a sentient entity known as Parallax and the two merged. Hal Jordan entered the battery to desperately try and save the few remaining Green Lanterns, whose power rings had not been rendered powerless by the death of Sinestro. Jordan ultimately defeated Sinestro, whose spirit was condemned to remain trapped inside the power battery for eternity. But for Sinestro, his victory was greater: not only had he destroyed the Green Lantern Corps, but through him, the yellow impurity entity Parallax had successfully infected Hal's mind, setting up Sinestro's ultimate triumph.

Guy Gardner, forced to forfeit his Green Lantern ring after a grudge match with Jordan, set out on a quest to regain his power and identity. With the help of Lobo, Gardner acquired the yellow power ring of Sinestro from Oa's Crypt of the Green Lantern Corps. The yellow ring did not use a battery to recharge but actually needed to be used against Green Lanterns to restore power. Gardner found this out by accident when a member of the GLC fought him while he had absolutely no power.

As the yellow ring spoke Sinestro's native language, Guy was unable to communicate with it, although it seemed to understand him to a degree. Guy only wore the yellow ring for a short while, before the comic writers decided to re-invent the Guy Gardner character.

In the meantime, the return of the Guardians resulted in the Corps being re-established, only to be attacked and annihilated by Jordan himself when he was possessed by the Parallax entity. Driven mad with grief by the destruction of his home city and the inaction of the Guardians towards his plight, the yellow impurity pushed Hal towards a Parallax-induced homicidal rampage that left scores of Green Lanterns dead or maimed as Parallax sought to absorb the Central Power Battery's energies into his being.

Sinestro was then revived by the Guardians and sent to stop Hal only to be murdered once again. But Sinestro's death was not as it appeared. He would later imply that the being that Jordan killed was a construct made by Parallax and unknowingly extracted from the Central Power Battery.

Hal Jordan promptly finished off the Green Lantern Corps by absorbing the Central Power Battery's energies into himself. How Sinestro escaped remains unexplained, but he survived and went into hiding as he watched Hal become what Sinestro had become: a traitor and a murderer reviled by his friends and his allies.

Sinestro eventually revealed this cunning ploy when Kyle Rayner discovered the existence of Parallax and revealed it to Green Arrow and the Justice League. Nearly killing the two heroes, Sinestro was stopped by the newly returned Hal Jordan, who reclaimed his ring and was purged of Parallax's influence. The two fought to a draw, with Sinestro escaping to the anti-matter universe when his ring was damaged by Hal during the fight.

Sinestro has lived to engaged in other sinister schemes. With the Green Lantern Corps restarted with the return of Hal Jordan, Sinestro has decided to found the Sinestro Corps, offering yellow power rings and a role in the Corps to the most feared and savage warriors of the universe. The size and scope of this new organization has yet to be revealed but stands to be a major threat for the Green Lantern Corps in the near future.

The Sinestro Corps storyline is still to be written; however, one thing stand for sure, Sinestro will continue to be a problem to Hal and the Green Lantern Corps for a long time more, and good arch-villains never, ever, ever disappear.