Just Stay at Home

I saw Sherlock Holmes last week. It wasn't the first time; I saw the movie in the theater. After all, I'm a pretty big Sherlock Holmes fan. I've read all the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as well as my fair share of Holmes tales written by other others.

But this isn't really about Sherlock Holmes. It's about the fact that I didn't connect the name Mark Strong (Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes to Mark Strong (Sinestro in Green Lantern). That's mostly because I forgot the guy's name. I mean, "Mark Strong" isn't the most common of names.

Now, when I realized exactly who it was who was playing Sinestro my immediate thought was: He's perfect. I still think so. But what it really did was finally drive home to me that this movie is actually happening. So far it's been hard to wrap my mind around the fact that there is actually going to be a Green Lantern movie. This has driven it home for me in a very explicit way.

For some reason Green Lantern never seemed like a likely movie. I always knew it would be a good movie, but how often do actually good comics get made into movies? It's usually really bad comics (or rather, bad adaptations of comics) that get made into movies. And by that I mean the movies have nothing to do with the actual comics.

See Steel. Or Catwoman. Those are the two most egregious examples. But something seems to have happened in recent years: Hollywood is actually making comic book movies that are like the comics. Geoff Johns's new position as Chief Creative Officer is the most shining example of that philosophy.

Will Green Lantern be good? I don't really know. But I think the fact that it's being made at all is a serious win for super-hero fans...

What astonishing thoughts await you in this week's Thursday Night Thinking?

I don't care what anyone says. Geoff Johns didn't make Sinestro cool. Sinestro has always been cool. And it's stuff like this that proves it.

Surely, you don't think Geoff Johns (brilliant though he is) was the first to imagine Sinestro creating a corps of anti-Lanterns, do you?

John Broome did it in the 1967 cringe-worthy classic, "My Mastermind, The Car!", in which the spirit of Sinestro possesses "Goitrude", the former cab of the former Green Lantern's former sidekick, Doiby Dickles. Yes, really; could I make that up?

"In brightest day, in blackest night,
no justice shall escape my sight!
Let those who worship justice's might
beware my power,
Evil Green Lantern's light!"

Evil people have no regard for scansion and meter, folks (for example, have you ever read Maya Angelou?). Either that, or Sinestro hired William S. Gilbert to pen the oath.

Nah; that would have come out more like this:

"In brightest day, I dare surmise,
or blackest night, to all surprise,
all justice seen before my eyes
shall surely quake and quiver.

Then justice-lovers, softly simpering,
bow their heads in shameful whimpering.
Evil Green Lantern light come shimmer, bring
death, and doom deliver!"


Anyway, the reason you never heard of the Evil Green Lanter Corps (a.k.a. Sinestro Corps 1.0), is that it failed in the beta test... in one panel.

Yeah, back in the day, all it took was Alan Scott and Hal Jordan to defeat the entire Sinestro Corps, and they did it in one panel, rather than 12 issues plus special one-shots.