Warning! Spoilers ahead for Green Lantern Corps #1!Few would argue that the Game of Thrones franchise has some fascinating villains, and it seems like DC Comics is taking some cues from the epic series. Writer Jeremy Adams discusses a villain’s surprising new era and relates this shocking development to a franchise with some of the most complex villains in fiction.
Jeremy Adams and Morgan Hampton, writers of the new Green Lantern Corps series, spoke with Comic Book Club to talk about twists in their first issue. The duo are eventually asked about Green Lantern’s nemesis Sinestro and the decision to make him a Corps member again.
Jeremy Adams: [Sinestro] is such an interesting character to me in that he’s never, especially for the last, I don’t know how many decades… It’s not that he has been completely evil, as much as a monarch, or that there is an internal moral compass. He does bad things. In the Green Lantern book, he was acting out of the need to want to go home. He was mad about, “I’m stuck here on Earth, and there are people that count on me,” which is interesting.
He’s an interesting character. When you’re watching Game of Thrones and you’re like, “That guy’s the worst character ever,” and then two seasons later, you’re like, “I love him.” Will he turn bad? He’s just so much more complicated than that. He’s so much more complicated than the Super Friends version of Sinestro. We would be doing his character disservice if that was just, “oh well, he’s bad now.” At least for me, I don’t think that’s anything I’ll ever do for Sinestro. There’s much more interesting fertile ground for him to till.
Adams justifies the decision, saying he’s never viewed Sinestro as completely evil and that, despite his worst actions, he’s got a moral compass. The writer also likens Sinestro to a character from Game of Thrones, saying that one can view him as despicable at one point only to come around and love them later.
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Few villains have had a path like Green Lantern’s number one foe. Thaal Sinestro started out as a Green Lantern who wanted to do good for the universe. But Sinestro used his power to have people obey the law out of fear. After being booted from the Corps, Sinestro mastered the Yellow Light to create an organization that rivaled the Green Lanterns. However, despite all the awful things he’s done, Sinestro has shown that he still has the spark of a hero within him, and has teamed up with the Green Lanterns periodically when the DCU was in serious jeopardy.
While Adams makes some good points about Sinestro, it should be noted that he’s not the only villain that has become more complex as time’s gone on. For the past three years, Poison Ivy’s held down a series that has reinvented her as a dark antihero instead of a straightforward villain. Not to mention the similar paths that Harley Quinn and Catwoman have taken. While it’s not to say that DC Comics has necessarily been adding complexity to these characters because of Game of Thrones, it’s a good example of the kinds of storytelling trends the modern DC audience expects.
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Sure, sometimes it’s fun to just let a bad guy be bad. But when villains are fleshed out and creators take time to dig into who these characters are, they become more engaging characters. Sinestro is such an entertaining character because he’s not just a evil dictator, he’s an incredibly flawed person with a sense of justice deep within him. Stories that are willing to go deeper than just a surface level interpretation usually wind up producing better antagonists. It worked forGame of Thronesand if Sinestro’s current path is any indication, it’s working for DC Comics as well.
Source: Comic Book Club
Green Lantern writer discusses an iconic DC villain and suggests how Game of Thrones fans might be into their latest unexpected development. Read More