Green Lantern #22 – Review

By: Robert Venditti (story), Billy Tan (pencils), Rob Hunter & Jon Sibal (inks), Alex Sinclair & Tony Avina (colors)

The Story: The orange monster becomes the green-eyed monster.

The Review: I miss Sinestro.  I know that’s a rather odd thing to say on this title, but the more I read Venditti’s Green Lantern, the more I realize why Geoff Johns kept Sinestro around for so long when the title relaunched.  While Sinestro in himself is a thoroughly compelling figure, one of the best characters Johns has ever reinterpreted, I think we’ve overlooked the importance he had as a foil to Hal Jordan.  In many ways, Hal is only half himself without his frenemy.

So long as you had Sinestro throwing his arrogance and insensitivity around, Hal always seemed much more sympathetic by comparison.  Sinestro’s flaws minimized Hal’s and humanized him as a result.  Now that we don’t have Sinestroy playing bad cop, Hal has to kind of take on that role himself, especially in his leadership position.  Granted, we find him in the middle of a crisis and no one’s at their best in such circumstances, but that doesn’t make him seem any less a jerk when he berates a gaggle of clearly terrified, unwilling recruits for doing nothing in the face of Larfleeze’s attack: “Are you four just going to stand there—or are you going to fight?”