Are You Afraid of the Color Yellow?

Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special One-Shot: "The Second Rebirth" (Johns & Van Sciver).

There's a heck of a lot of wars going on in comics now and it was with some dread that I picked up the Sinestro Corps One-Shot. That's nothing against any of the creators or the characters - while I've found Green Lantern to be a bit of a let down in recent months, the Green Lantern Corps have always been my favorite DC characters and there was no way I wasn't going to read this book.

Flat out - this is the best DC book I've read all year.

Over the course of the issue, Sinestro rounds out his new Sinestro Corps (yeah, a better name could have been had, probably by a spoonful of Alpha Bits), launching his first major assault against the GLC in the process. There's plenty of carnage, plenty of Lantern-fightin' goodness, and plenty of twists and turns that propel the story forward at an ever-increasing pace.

Johns expertly builds the level of his gasp! moments, which center on the heavy hitters of the new Sinestro Corps: Cyborg, Superboy Prime (who DC is now calling Superman Prime due to litigation), Kyle Rayner as Parallax, and the Anti Monitor.

I like that Johns has gone out and brought in heavy hitters that are more than former members of the GLC or simply new characters. Turning Kyle into Parallax seems a bit of a cheap shot towards the CFG's fans but Johns has earned some trust that he's doing this for character reasons and that Kyle will pull through on the other side a better character for having gone through it.

The most important part of this story, of course, is Sinestro himself, and Johns' Sinestro is a twisted, determined visionary who wants to bring fear to the universe. Sinestro is a single-minded dreamer-turned-fascist, one who was given power and then took his mission to the nth degree, losing all sense of perspective the further down his path he ventured. He's a terrorist that imposes fear onto a society because that society has turned from the "correct" path.

It will be interesting to see how the power structure of the SC works - is the Anti Monitor the actual man-in-charge or is he just a superpowered benefactor? Will Superman Prime and Cyborg take orders? Challenge Sinestro? And most interestingly, what will be the role of Kyle Rayner? Will he resist Parallax or has his own mind been completely overridden by the creature? I'm most interested to see if Sinestro treats Kyle as a student, which seems to be the indication given the back-up tale that shows us Sinestro and Hal in a similar dynamic.

It's just a great, action-packed issue from start to finish that has me jazzed for what's coming in Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps.