In email, colby (from Survivor? We may never know) asks
Why is Sinestro so popular now? Up until a few years ago he was the dorky evil ex-Lantern, but now he’s one of the most popular villains DC has. Maybe even one of the most popular characters. Why did that happen?
Hey, remember the early 1990s, when antihero villains like Venom became so popular because they were basically like the heroes they fought except they were total badasses, because they had a good (if brutal and unsympathetic) point? Take that as your starting point. Then recall that over the last decade, DC has gradually made it more and more clear that the Guardians of the Universe are now conspiratorial baddies. Therefore, when Sinestro rebelled against them, he had a point. And unlike Venom, who had to compete with Spider-Man (who is beloved by nerds), Sinestro only has to compete with Hal Jordan, and I am not the only person out there who loathes Hal Jordan.
That’s why.
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It also helps that he lost that naff blue pointy napkin/clown collar thing.
Conspiratorial baddies? More like incompetent nincompoops whom have failed every single time they’ve been asked to step up to plate.
Crisis? – they were completely in the wrong.
Final Crisis – completely in the wrong.
The GL Corps has been wiped out at least twice (at the end of Crisis, and then when Hal went Nutso), and has sustained major casualties in both the Sinestro Corps and Blackest Night and War of the GLs. Oh, and you should probably count that whole “Manhunter” fiasco….
These guys should maybe scale back their Guardianship duties…maybe start with say, successfully guarding an abandoned mall parking lot. That’s about their speed.
Because of you, Mr. Bird, my immediate reaction to the Green Lantern “Fuck Hal Jordan!”
I bothered the children next to me in the theatre. I was forced to explain that Hal Jordan was terrible because a genius blogger said so. They seemed unmoved by my logic. This is why the next generation will probably die by jamming their fingers into outlets for fun.
*Green Lantern movie trailer was
I suspect that the answer may be a lot simpler. For whatever reason, the Green Lanterns and the Guardians have been pivotal elements in something like 9 out of DC’s last 12 big crossover events. And Sinestro’s about the only really memorable villain the Green Lanterns have. Who else is there?
1. Hal’s crazy ex-wife
2. occasionally, Hal himself
-2a. that yellow thing that lived in Hal’s hair for a while and made him evil
3. the dude who put Kyle’s girlfriend in the refrigerator
4. ?? (Zombie Kilowog?)
I guess they have that puking cat now too. I assume it’s a villain, cats usually are.
Why is it always the boring Lanterns that go rogue? Why can’t Mogo ever go rogue? How would you tell?
@Cespinarve: Well, he kinda did, under Krona’s control in War of the GLs along with the rest of the Corps, resulting in an ever expanding armada of mind-controlled renegade Lanterns. And then he was headshot’d by John Stewart.
His appearances in the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons probably helped as well, where he was sold not as an amazing badass, but a counterpart to John Stewart, dangerous without being overwhelming. Obviously that doesn’t fit with him being Hal Jordan’s arch-nemesis, but it helped erode any lingering perceptions of him as a dorky ex-Lantern who just got kicked around.
I think it’s a combination of Green Lantern really having the most anemic rogues gallery in comics and the fact that Sinestro is basically Hal Jordan taken to his logical conclusion.
Hal is a blowhard who thinks he knows best and can defy authority to save the universe. Sinestro is…a blowhard who thinks he knows best and can defy authority to save the universe. Because of the superhero narrative Hal becomes Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon while Sinestro is basically Vic Mackey from The Shield, but both are dangerous rogues who you probably wouldn’t want to stand very close to in real life.
Sinestro is a great character. As EO pointed out, he’s basically Hal* as a villain and Hal was more interesting as a villain anyway. Plus he’s got an awesome ‘stache and a Silver Age goofy name.
*Guy is also basically Hal … though Guy comes off as more likable since people react to him like they should be reacting to Hal.
Still, I’ve read that he’s back in the GLC and I can’t decide which is stupider on the part of the Guardians; letting Sinestro back into the GLC, letting Hal back into the GLC, or giving the most powerful weapon in the universe to a guy named “Sinestro” in the first place.
Damanoid hit the nail on the head.
Hal Jordan doesn’t have any good villains except Sinestro. So Sinestro has gotten a hell of a lot of a work out over the past few years because Sonaar and The Shark just make everyone sad when they show up and all of the Kyle Rayner guys are tied pretty heavily to Kyle Rayner. So all Sinestro, all the time and every time he shows up, Geoff Johns feels obliged to make him out as the baddest badass ever.
There’s also Hector Hammond but do you really need two guys with receding hairlines and tiny mustaches?
I remember Geoff Johns describing Sinestro as a space anarchist in GL: Rebirth… and then promptly described him as a fascist.
“letting Sinestro back into the GLC”
Haven’t actually read the books myself, but from what I’ve heard, that’s not exactly how it happened.
Johns best work on GL was taking Sinestro and truly going all the way with making him an actual fascist, in the true sense of the word (i.e. not just an insult for someone who’s politics you disagree with.)
@Tales to Enrage: I barely remember Sinestro doing anything of note in the Justice League cartoons, so I wouldn’t call that a valid explanation for his popularity now.
“Up until a few years ago,” Sinestro was usually dead or trapped in a lantern or something. So I think its not so much that he’s suddenly popular as much as that he’s suddenly available for fans to have an opinion of him.
Can I loathe both of them? Is that allowed?
I operate under a simple rule; if Johns has a hard-on for a character, they probably 1) suck, and 2) will suck EVEN HARDER once he gets through molesting their franchise.
Anemic? Have you looked at the rogues gallery Martian Manhunter has? But that’s beside the point. Most of Hal’s rogues are not deep or too weird for people to understand and therefore “hate”. Batman’s are easy, by comparison.
It’s worth noting that as ranked by IGN (not totally sure that link works, but I read the list here), Sinestro is DC’s best villain other than Darkseid or those specifically tied to Batman or Superman.
They don’t want to overuse Darkseid, and it’s hard to get much crossover potential out of Batman’s enemies; the Joker, for example, might trick Mxyptlk out of his power or “Jokerize” other villains, but on the whole it doesn’t take the entire JLA to fight him on an equal footing, let alone all the heroes involved in a crossover. So if they want to do a big event, a rogue GL who sortakindamaybe has a point is probably a better antagonist-or-reluctant-ally than Lex Luthor.
One reason might because they’re shrinking his head. It’s still oversized, but check out some of the old Joe Staton GL’s where Sin’s head is about 1/3 the mass of his body.
“Guy is also basically Hal … though Guy comes off as more likable since people react to him like they should be reacting to Hal.”
Well, and before the ring, Guy was a coach and social worker. Hal was a douchebag.
And when well written, Guy is a bit of a jerk, but a stand-up guy you want to drink a beer with. Hal still is a…well…Hal’s never been well written, so there’s that.
I feel the same way about Black Adam, in his role in 52. He had morals, but he was a total badass in how he wanted to live by them.
Antiheroes are, the 90s not withstanding, just as popular as they ever were.
With the exception of Killowog, only red, orange and yellow lanterns are interesting anymore.
Willpower isn’t an emotion so Green lanterns have lost their placement in the continuity. Blues and Indigos are basically Ethan Van Sciver’s commentary on liberalism so they’re entirely half-assed. The Star Sapphires are a face-palming way of trying to make everything about Carol Ferris’ criminal past make sense.
Black and White lanterns – That’ll be two drawn out MacGuffins with extra cheese to go please.
For me, it’s the fact that he treats Hal Jordan like something unpleasant you’d find on the bottom of your shoe, something which no one else in the DCU (except Batman) seems capable of doing even though they really should.
The Guardians are the new Spectre – the hugely powerful force that in big “events” has to drop the ball, for story reasons.
So yes, Sinestro looks better for opposing them, but GL villains aren’t really all that bad – it’s just that none of them are really up to the task of challenging a GL. Seriously, the Shark? Hyper-evolved mutant sea predator with telekinesis. Plenty fun, and plenty troublesome in the right context. Tattooed Man? I’d say the same. (Maybe not Javelin. Though he’s made Hal look pretty foolish a couple of times, for what that’s worth.)
Actually, when you put it that way most GL villains would make great Aquaman villains. Sonar? Even more effective in the water. The Shark? Even more fearsome in the water. The Tattooed Man? Looks like he should be hanging out in a seafood restaurant.
Actually, I’ll go out on a limb here. I loathe the Hal that most people mean when they say ‘Hal Jordan,’ that being the character for whom casting Ryan Reynolds as the live-action version of was a perfect fit.
But I loved, and I mean loved enough to track down every individual issue because they never put out GNs, Hal-Spectre. Much moreso than Corrigan-Spectre and the complete and utter nonentity that was Crispus-Spectre. DeMatteis did some fine fine work there.
Hal was more interesting dead than he was as Parallax, and he was more interesting as Parallax than he was as a GL.
It seems Johns is becoming increasingly disenchanted with Hal nowadays, actually (having moved on to being the middle of a sexy Aquaman/Sinestro sandwich), given that he’s now having Hal discover the effects of his douchebaggery on his own life and other people and seizing every opportunity for him to get utterly told by Sinestro in truly cathartic fashion. That alone has made New 52 Green Lantern worth it for me.
By the way MGK, since your enduring hatred of Hal is well documented, who’s your favorite GL and why?
Was Hal Jordan this disliked pre-Crisis (the first one) as well?
I remember being quite fond of him reading old GL stories from that time when he teamed up with Green Arrow. Of course, being new the superhero comics then I liked pretty much everything that I read, not sure how they would hold up for a re-read.
He does come across as quite the douchebag in many recent comics.
If Sinestro became the permanent star of the “Green Lantern” comic, and Hal was relegated to whipping boy/comic relief status (Lantern Lad), I would never stop buying that comic book. Issue after issue of “Sinestro humiliates Hal and shows how much he sucks”.
It doesn’t hurt that Sinestro is based on David Niven, which makes him even cooler.
Hector Hammond was actually a good villain. Evil, paralyzed, super-psionic immortal. Capable of killing someone without leaving his cell. One of my favorite silver age GL stories (I don’t have the hate for Hal so many in this thread do) was one where Hal barely survives Hammond’s scheme and never realizes who almost killed him.
“Was Hal Jordan this disliked pre-Crisis (the first one) as well?”
Hard to say they were different times as far as the make up of fandom and the communications available.
That being said Neal Adams and Denny O’Neil pretty much made him a dim-witted whipping boy to Green Arrow.
Steve Englehart wrote Green Lantern for years and his stories had Hal quitting and being replaced by Stewart and when Hal finally came back he was part of an ensamble cast of a half dozen alien lanterns, plus Stewart and Gardner.
Then a few years later they killed him and doubled sales on GL.
So I’d say there’s a good body of evidence there.
Fire. And… uh… That’s all I’ve got.
My problem is that Hal even comes of as a bit of a tool in Silver Age comics, even by Silver Age Standards. It’s not to say he doesn’t also appear in some good comics, but he (And his irritating Kennedy-esque brothers) come off as people that you really would like to punch if you were exposed to them for an extended period.
I don’t get the dislike for Hal. Most of the problems with him is for some reason people seem compelled to act like twits around him
Which people would that be?
Or are you referring to fans? Heh, is hating Hal Jordan merely a popular meme?
If it is, I was in on it long before it became one.
Christ I hate Hal Jordan. And DC is making me feel the same way about Barry Allen.
Is Hal Hate the new Aquaman hate?
People never really hated Aquaman. It was more a case of Aquaman never really being cool and the old superfriend cartoons made him an easy target.
The whole ‘Ruler of 2/3rds of the earths surface’ and ‘Hey, I gots me a hook for a hand!’ just made efforts to coolify him all the more painful.
On the other hand though, he rocked that beard pretty well.
Hating Hal and the disdain for Aquaman are really about different things. People dumping on Aquaman just seem to think he’s lame, while I think in Hal’s case it’s more of a backlash because they think he was a character with little value who was revived and given a big push when he was probably better off left dead.
Ah, I start to understand.
There was no hate for Hal Jordan while he was dead and earlier then?
I disagree. Hal was well-written in the Bronze Age by Lne Wein. He was written even better by Gerard Jones in the early 90s. At the time he was a mature and interesting character with a sense of balance and a desire to have a life outside of the costume.
Obviously, then came Emerald Twilight. But even when DC decided to undo that little mishap, they screwed it up. Johns has erased all of Jones’ character development. The current Hal Jordan actually is a macho blowhard with an improbable column of sexual conquests. So he’ll remain until DC assigns another writer who knows what he’s doing, which I hope happens in my lifetime.
Actually Chris, I love Parallax Hal . I’m not even kidding, it’s actually the moment Hal clicked right for me ! If any of you had that sort of power, tell me you would not try, or even consider, playing hokey pokey with time ? THAT makes him all the more relatable, & tell me you wouldn’t turn the rotten little smurfs into ashes ? >:) Final Night was the proper ending as far as I’m concerned for Hal, even though I liked him as the specter.
As for Guy, he acts like a jerk but is a good person deep down & will always be much more than a green lantern, an advantage he has over all the others & why Beau Smith succeeded in giving Guy a voice as Guy Guardner & not a superhero codename ( & I love the vuldarian powers, anything that lets you flip off the smurfs is aa-ookay for me !)
People like Sinestro because he was , along with Henshaw, the only needed resurrection, Hal’s was superfluous… Also if Daffy Duck could replace him both as a lantern and Parallax then sue Larfleeze then I’d be all for it.
Speaking of Spidey, you might like this. http://devilkais.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4hy2uz
(can you give me at least 10 Dr Strange villains & their best issues , origins or otherwise please ?)