Wednesday, September 7, 2011

My Favourite Characters: Worst Lantern Ever

Planet Korugar, located in space sector 1417 of the DC Comics multiverse, must once have been a lovely place. A trusting place. A place where reddish-magenta occasionally pointy-eared rarely big-headed people did ordinary Korugarian things... and nobody thought much of an archeologist joining the space police force of the Green Lanterns.

The devilish features, the vaguely Hitler-ish haircut, drawn in 1961 to resemble David Niven. Why would he turn on anybody? Who would ever suspect good old...

Then there's the name.


That's not a give-away, right?

O.K., so it turns out over the decades that he's had a lot going on. He wasn't just a control freak ruling his planet with an all-powerful green energy fist.

He's not just a giant yellow boot stamping forever on a human face.

No, sir! Sinestro had a love (Arin Sur) and a daughter (Dr. Soranik Natu), and even a first name (Thaal, by the by).

Voiced by a dozen guys so far, with Mark Strong portraying him in the live-action 2011 film, I have a personal favourite whose voice I hear when I read Sinestro through the brightly coloured Lantern Wars and now that he's been forced back into the Green Corps once more.

Though all the performers I've heard have been their own brand of evil, there's none quite like John de Lancie in the Duck Dodgers spoof 'The Green Loontern'. Nuance-shmuance! The guy's a rat!
De Lancie's Sinestro is definitive. Cackling, moustache-twirling, cop-kidnapping, over-the-toppest fruitiest of the nutcakes. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

Catch the further adventures of that kooky Korugarian in a comic shop or download near you, as Geoff Johns explains what the do-dah-@#&% a fear-mongering genocidal jerkus is doing back in Green.

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