The Sinestro Corps War is an integral part and highlight of Geoff Johns' Green Lantern run,
but does it work as a standalone event? WOOF WOOF! Hey guys, it's me Marcus AKA The Maddogg,
and we're back with another video! written by jeff johns dave gibbons and peter j tomassi and
illustrated primarily by ivan rice ethan van sciver and patrick gleason the sinestro core
wars special was published by dc comics in august of 2007. the event then continued in
issues 21 to 25 of green lantern and issues 14 to 18 of the green lantern core series and the
sinestro corps has risen with the spread of fever across the galaxy looking unstoppable hal jordan
and the rest of the green lanterns will assemble to prevent the destruction of elway and life as
we know it but what happens when their strongest members turned against them and when facing an
unbeatable opponent can the very laws that govern the green lanterns be overturned and at what cost
overall despite the fact that there is a few artists working on this they're all great and they
all bring something different to the table but it's never to the point where it's so jarring from
what someone else has done because last time i reviewed avengers vs x-men and i wasn't really too
happy with one of the artists on that so it's just great that in this even though there is different
people i like all of them and forgetting the controversy that surrounds him because i really
don't want to get political on this channel but ethan van skyver is a phenomenal artist
he brings just such a level of detail his lines are so crisp and i love the few chances that we
got where we saw glimpses of what his other dc characters would look like however his time on
this is pretty much just contained to the special issue in a few pages here and there throughout the
series and if i did have to find one critique of his art it's that he seems to rely quite heavily
on his ability to do full page spreads and yeah i know that that doesn't sound like a problem but as
i was flicking through this book i noticed that a lot of his are just full page spreads of something
that doesn't really need that at first it's cool because it might be in the depths of space so you
can see just how desolate a planet is but then it happens on quite a few occasions and i'm like
yeah again space is quite empty insane that atmosphere does feel integral to its style
when you're in space it's still got this claustrophobic feel because maybe there's
a ton of asteroids around you and you've just got that feeling that maybe something's hidden
behind them and it's easy to feel lost in this artwork and not really know exactly where you
are in this universe but a large part of this book is illustrated by ivan rice an artist that needs
absolutely no introduction he was integral to my enjoyment of the aquaman new 52 run which
i absolutely loved when i reviewed it and what i like about his art is that it's impressive at
first glance but not in a super obvious in your face kind of way it was one of those styles that
i liked every page from him but the more that i looked into it i could appreciate every detail
that's left there he's honestly a dude that i'm struggling to find a fault with his style is a
great mix of modern detail but at the same time it has just this classic feel to it and i know
saying that it's like a mix of modern and classic doesn't really make sense but when i look at it
that's really the only way that i can describe it because the sheer amount of just stuff that
he can put on the page is phenomenal his action was energetic and knew when to expand the page but
you could also handle pages where there were a ton of panels without it ever looking like any of them
were lacking in detail it's something that i don't give enough focus to as well despite the fact that
it is pretty much the primary focus of art but his ability to tell a story with the art was great and
on some pages it felt like i could understand what was happening just by looking at his illustrations
speaking of which gleeson doesn't get the respect that he deserves for this title his art's just so
underrated and i appreciate it more now because i reviewed the batman and robin run that he did with
peter j to massey and i can see the development that he's had in no way am i saying that the art
that's in the sinestrok war is bad it's great but he's an artist that has just got better over time
and yet if i'm being objective about it i can't say that his art is as refined as van skyver or
rice but the same time he doesn't like the team down he was great at juggling a ton of characters
and making sure that they're all unique and somebody that you'd remember which was really
important because it's been a good couple of years since i've read this run so it's just great that
everybody got the focus on the back of that the settings were also really interesting with gleason
on the art no i'm not just talking about mogo i love the scenes that took place on corrigan
city and it's a reason why i really hope that this title gets its own omnibus so all in all the art
was great throughout and i feel like every artist on this did a stellar job and it did appreciate
the differences in style which just made it more interesting to jump between the two series it's
nice because it all just felt like it was part of the same event and it's the reason why i remember
this so vividly it's also probably the reason why it's been collected in so many different editions
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them from the description down below and you can use these codes as many times as you like jumping
into the story now and i don't care whether people think this is an event or just a crossover because
it's just damn fun and i think that these smaller scale events are just as important as the big ones
and besides stuff like mutant massacre full of the mutants and age of apocalypse count
as an event despite the fact that they mostly contained to x-men books i'm spending way too
long justifying this but the biggest criticism that i hear with comic events is that they're
often way too bloated and it's nice that the sinestro core war doesn't have that because of
that i never got the feeling like there was titles there just for the sake of it or that another book
was jumping in just because it felt like it had to there was also great synergy between the two
main titles and i don't think i appreciated just how important that was until i started reading
the event that's going to be reviewed next in saying that though i did prefer the main green
lantern title as much as i enjoyed core there was more than a few moments where it felt like
it was just left with a secondary task and just waiting to react to things that happened in the
main series there were multiple parts where it felt like the book just went hal jordan and the
other green lanterns that most people could name you go to earth and everybody else you go to
i don't know keep yourself busy on ranks but in saying that i did really enjoy the battle for
mogo and it felt like there was a real standing ground for the lanterns because what this event
did well was set up the stakes from the beginning and without reading the stuff that came before it
i really can't remember how many issues they spent setting this up but by the time that had already
jumped into this [ __ ] had already gone past the fan another thing that i really liked is that by
the end they managed to bring it back to earth and still keep this centered around hal jordan while
still making the efforts of all the other lanterns not feel like they've gone to waste however one
thing that i wasn't too happy with was the amount of time that we had to spend with the guardians i
prefer when they adjust this council of mysterious characters that are making judgments and decisions
behind the scenes in sure yes he did have some important moments i'm not saying get rid of
them completely but i do feel like we could have done with less of them and personally speaking
they're just not a group of characters that i find very entertaining and speaking of bigger
groups that i had an issue with the motivations of the individual sinestro corps members never
really dealt further than just being like i'm already evil so i might as well but sinestro was
the only member that i felt really had something to prove and don't get me wrong there were other
interesting members of the sinestro call that i really enjoyed seeing on the page having some
more diverse motivations even if it wouldn't have been fully fleshed out would have just helped to
add a bit more to this story and just add great attention the weird thing is as well a lot of
the green lanterns get some development but that mostly happens in the main green lantern title and
i thought that would be the other way around also this might be a little bit of a disappointment to
some but it's only really the green lanterns that we already know quite a lot about that
get that focus you know characters like kyle guy jon stewart and keller wager front and center and
i did really like that but especially in the team booth there were a lot of characters that you were
told are important but you never really know why again it's probably because these issues are in
the middle of the run but it is something that hinted my experience one lantern that i'm glad
got quite a big moment in this was ceranic and yeah i don't know if i pronounced that correctly
and it's one of the backstories that i'm glad tied in well to the main plot and it was also
just nice scene one of the main characters of the core series not always having to hang around with
the other lanterns and get their own interesting albeit short story that puts the spotlight on them
for a little bit of this book additionally there is a lot that goes on in this main event and at
a certain point stuff had just happened that i didn't really understand but i was just like
okay i'll come along for the ride and yeah i'm talking about the anti-monitor don't get me wrong
it's cool as anything but i was just like eh and i think there was just a point in this book where i
accepted that i wasn't gonna understand everything that was happening and at the same time that was
okay because things moved so quickly that if there was something that i didn't understand
it wouldn't take over the full focus of the book which is actually one of the strengths of this
event because it never feels like it's treading water and one minor thing that kept cropping up
that i really enjoyed was the fact that the other lanterns just haven't forgotten what hell did when
it was parallax even though kyle gets infected and that's not really a spoiler because it happens at
the end of the first issue they still all just seem to give hal a really hard time about it i
found that really funny because it's like when you're at work and there's somebody who does
something dumb and you know just for the sake of argument let's pretend it's not me but that
will be the only thing that some people will remember you by but one problem that i had with
the sinestro corps is that it felt like they were only really formidable until the rules of era were
changed which made me wonder if they were that much of a threat to begin with or was it just that
they knew the weakness of the lanterns that issue where the rules are changed i thought was great it
might even be me favorite in this event those were the moments with the guardians that i did enjoy i
like seeing the debate and all the philosophical arguments that they had and then just the reaction
of all the lanterns when the ring makes the announcement and they know that this can fully
be a war now another thing was that at a certain point it felt like this boot kind of just gave
up with the war with the sinestro court and spent way too much time focusing on set up for blackie's
night i get that this is often referred to as the empire strikes back of the jeff johnson's
green lantern trilogy even though i feel like war of the green lanterns is just as important to his
run but it felt like this ended really abruptly to just tease what was coming next and that's
the weird thing that has me conflicted with this event and i get that this is going to be an odd
criticism to say that you need to know a bit about green lantern to really enjoy this but blackest
night which came out after this it's actually more accessible to a new reader i'm not really going to
hold that against this event but it's something that you should consider if you are planning on
jumping into this oh my god one thing i really didn't enjoy about this though there were really
boring flashbacks that were happening during the fight between superboy prime and sodamyat
like you've already got a decent matchup between two quite important characters in this event
and i really like superboy prime just because of the fact that he's a complete nutcase he's never
thought me though like you can't deny that but we kept leaving this really entertaining fight to see
how sodam grew up and it's like were you scared that people were enjoying the fight too much or
something although i found myself wishing for some of that backstory before i wish they would have
known when to place it in this story and actually just make it a bit more interesting to begin
with despite that the fight itself was really entertaining and there's just so many examples
of great fights in this book every time there'd be a group fight where there were so many characters
fighting each other that you couldn't really keep track of it there'd be a one-on-one fight
that just felt so much more personal and it just seemed to get better the longer the series went on
as we got closer to the end and it was super boy prime fighting sodom yad this was really brutal
and entertaining but then when you got to jalvia's sinestro it felt like that was more important than
the massive battle that was happening behind them i also love that hal still isn't afraid of getting
into a fist fight he hasn't got too comfortable with the ring and that's probably his greatest
strength as a lantern you know besides the whole no fear thing i'm actually struggling to think of
more to say but i think that's all right because this is a bit of a shorter event then again there
are some other things i want to talk about but i guess that they would be spoilers this is your
final spoiler warning if you don't want anything ruined make sure you skip to the final verdict but
i didn't like sodom yet enough to really care when he became the new ion and admittedly i am a big
car reyna fan so i was a little bit disappointed to see that the power left him and having him
fight sinestro for a bit at the end without having that power it was interesting to see and it was a
nice dynamic for once he does have to charge his power ring and even though it felt a bit hokey to
just see him in hell jumping across rooftops to find this one lantern that they'd left in
his brother's house it was still just cool seeing that he now has to adjust to different things the
one moment that i was most disappointed in though was seeing how use all those sinestro core rings
and it didn't really amount to anything collide did give us that cool cover but that can't be
the only thing that it does it was also the issue where they fought leicester drake and it just felt
like that was a cool cliffhanger that they set up that they didn't really have a massive payoff for
now yes there is so many things in this event that does have a payoff that i can't really hold
it against the series that much but still this was one of the only issues that had a massive misstep
in the book and it did hinder me experience at the time speaking of which there is a massive
cliffhanger in the last issue with the core series mungle being a sinestro core yes please sign me
up on one hand it's great because it already shows that this event is going to have lasting
consequences but i also feel like they could have incorporated this early on and had it be a bigger
part of the sinestro court wall so this may sound like a complaint but i'm actually happy that they
made me want to jump into more green lantern titles this is my final verdict an event comics
seem to have a bit of a bad reputation so if an event can subvert those expectations in the same
way that the sinestro core war does i can't help but give it some respect you might even disagree
with me classifying this as an event because it's so small in comparison to other things that
happened at dc but when this was first released it was massive and it elevated the two core titles
to the front of the comics universe now yes read outside of those two titles he isn't exactly new
reader friendly so i can't really recommend it for everybody i don't even think i put this on
me where to start green lantern but spinning out of green lantern reboot there's so much passion
and energy and creativity that went into this event it's hard not to enjoy it if you've got
a base level of knowledge about hal jordan and his old mentor the art's phenomenal regardless of
which title you're reading and it's an event that actually had meaning and yes it might not be on
as big of a scale as infinite crisis or even the next green lantern event that happened which was
black it's night but the sinestro core war never lost focus of what's most important at its core
ironically the world the lore the characters are all taken to the next level storylines are
set up for years to come and it was just damn entertaining from start to finish it's worth
a reread even though you would need a bit of a refresher on this universe and it does naturally
read better when it's part of jeff jones's full run but i can't mark it down for me reading it
out of order so for the experience it gave me on a smaller scale and just how much this event means
i'm gonna give it a very respectable 75 percent so that's the video hopefully you enjoyed it
but until next time just make sure that you stay safe and stay mad all you dogs see the next video