Sinestro


Thaal Sinestro is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, particularly those featuring Green Lantern. Created by John Broome and Gil Kane, Sinestro is a former Green Lantern Corps member who was dishonorably discharged for abusing his power. He has since endured as the archenemy of the superhero Green Lantern and is the founder of the Sinestro Corps.
Sinestro has appeared in various forms of non-comics media including shows, films, and video games. Ted Levine, Miguel Ferrer, Xander Berkeley, Ron Perlman, Victor Garber, Jason Isaacs, and others have voiced the character in animated television series and films. The character made his live-action debut in the 2011 film Green Lantern, played by Mark Strong, and will be portrayed by Ulrich Thomsen in the DC Universe, beginning with the series Lanterns.

Publication history

Sinestro was created by John Broome and Gil Kane, and first appeared in Green Lantern #7. According to Kane, his appearance was modeled after British actor David Niven.
In 2009, IGN ranked Sinestro as the 15th-greatest comic book villain of all time.

Fictional character biography

Green Lantern

Sinestro is born on the planet Korugar in space sector 1417. His dedication to preserving order originally manifests in his previous career, an anthropologist specializing in the reconstruction of ancient Korugan civilizations. One day, Green Lantern Prohl Gosgotha crash-lands near him, injured and apparently dying. Prohl gives his ring to Sinestro, who barely understands what to do with it before coming under attack from the Lantern's pursuer: a Weaponer of Qward. In the end, Sinestro has to destroy the ruins he was restoring to crush the Qwardian. Afterwards, Gosgotha turns out to still be alive and asks for his ring back so he can summon help. Addicted to the ring's immense power, Sinestro lets him die and convinces the Guardians that the ring chose him as Gosgotha's successor.
In Green Lantern #45, his wife is shown for the first time in a flashback and revealed to be the sister of Abin Sur.
When Hal Jordan joins the Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro, now a seasoned and respected Lantern, is assigned to be his instructor. Jordan is horrified at his new mentor's totalitarian methods, though Sinestro maintains that he is only doing what he considers necessary to protect Korugar. During his training, Jordan helps Sinestro repel an attempted invasion by the alien warlords known as the Khunds. When Jordan disobeys orders and contacts the Lanterns for help, Sinestro's dictatorship is exposed, and he is forced to appear before the Guardians for punishment. Katma Tui, the leader of a Korugarian resistance movement who feels that Sinestro's "protection" keeps her people from growing as a society through contact with other alien races, is recruited as his replacement in the Corps. Katma Tui eventually grows into one of the most respected Green Lanterns, but she and the rest of Korugar initially resists her appointment to the Corps. Due to Sinestro's actions, Korugar has come to consider the symbol of the Green Lantern Corps an emblem of terror and oppression.

Punishment and villainy

For using the power of the Green Lantern to instill fear rather than combat it, the Guardians banish Sinestro to the antimatter universe, a counterpart to the "real" universe made up of "negative matter". Sinestro ends up on the antimatter world of Qward, that universe's counterpart of the Guardians' homeworld Oa, which is ruled by the Weaponers of Qward, a race of warriors and scientists that bear a fierce hatred of the Guardians and all Green Lanterns. By exiling Sinestro to a world ruled by evil beings who specifically hate Green Lanterns, the Guardians hope to humble him. However, Sinestro is quick to seize the opportunity, persuading the Weaponers that he can use his knowledge of the Corps to destroy them for good.
Creating a yellow power ring for Sinestro to use, the Weaponers send him back to the "positive matter" universe to seek revenge. Sinestro quickly becomes the Green Lantern Corps' most powerful nemesis, partially due to a weakness in their power rings that prevent them from directly affecting the color yellow. Despite this, skilled Green Lanterns like Jordan, Sinestro's most hated enemy, always find ways to defeat him.

Pre-Crisis

Sinestro first meets Hal after already making an alliance with Qward; the latter had already beaten the Weaponers three times. Sinestro takes him to Qward and is able to imprison him in a yellow bubble by threatening to kill 100,000 innocent people. Hal uses his ring to create the illusion that it is nearly out of power. After releasing Hal from the bubble to eliminate him, Sinestro is defeated and imprisoned in a specially constructed cell by Hal, who does not take him back to his universe as it would go against the jurisdiction of the Guardians. By gradually sapping the cell's power, Sinestro escapes and continues to menace Hal. He tries to attack the Guardians after kidnapping Hal and assuming his identity to occupy a meeting of Green Lanterns and absorb power from their rings by casting an illusion of an attacking monster. However, Jordan escapes and defeats Sinestro, who is placed in a new prison empowered by the rings of hundreds of Lanterns, so he cannot drain it. However, Sinestro anticipates this and uses a backup yellow ring hidden in his boot to escape.

Post-Crisis

Before the Guardians take a leave of absence from their universe to attempt mating with their female counterparts, the Zamarons, they construct an inescapable prison for Sinestro and thousands of others on Oa. Sinestro manages to free himself through the mental manipulation of the Mad God of Sector 3600. Wielding nearly unlimited power, Sinestro murders entire star systems until he is finally subdued by the Green Lantern Corps of Earth. Guilty of multiple acts of genocide, Sinestro is put on trial again by the assembled membership of the Green Lantern Corps. Finding him guilty, they condemn him to death and execute him. Sinestro manages to cheat death by sending his essence into the Central Power Battery and shutting it down. While in the Battery, he also makes a startling discovery about the ancient weakness to yellow within the Green Lanterns' light.
Hal Jordan enters the Battery in a desperate attempt to restore the powers of his fellow Lanterns and ultimately defeats Sinestro, whose spirit is condemned to remain trapped inside the Central Battery, powerless, for eternity. Yet Sinestro earns an even greater personal victory as the so-called "yellow impurity" turns out to be a sentient entity known as Parallax, the living embodiment of fear. He also discovers the battery's power source is Parallax's counterpart, Ion, the embodiment of willpower. Thanks to Sinestro's actions, Parallax infects Jordan's mind, leaving him vulnerable to fear and setting up Sinestro's ultimate triumph.

Guy Gardner

Sinestro's original yellow ring is stolen by Guy Gardner from Oa's crypt. During the encounter, Sinestro possesses John Stewart to confront Guy, but his spirit is not strong enough to defeat Gardner's willpower.
As the yellow ring only "speaks" Sinestro's native language, Guy was unable to communicate with it, which seems to understand him to a degree.
Guy only wears the yellow ring for a short time before Hal Jordan, possessed by Parallax, destroys it.

Parallax

In the meantime, the return of the Guardians results in the Corps being re-established. The newly restored Corps is short-lived, thanks to the inadvertent efforts of the alien warlord Mongul and Hank Henshaw, a cyborg who is at the time impersonating Superman. As part of their ultimately thwarted plot to transform Earth into a new version of Mongul's interstellar fortress Warworld and gain revenge on Superman, Mongul and the Cyborg use several nuclear devices to destroy Coast City, California, which is Hal Jordan's home, and everyone living in it. Driven mad with grief by the destruction of his city and the Guardians' apathy towards his plight, Jordan's previously indomitable willpower is shattered. Parallax is thus able to possess him completely and push him towards a homicidal rampage that wipes out most of the Guardians and leaves scores of Green Lanterns dead or maimed, as Parallax seeks to absorb the Central Power Battery's energies into his being.
As a last-ditch effort to halt Jordan's rampage, the Guardians free Sinestro from the Central Power Battery and send him to stop Jordan. After a battle, Jordan snaps Sinestro's neck, apparently killing him. It is later revealed that what the Guardians actually extracted from the Battery was a hard-light construct of Sinestro, created by Parallax and mentally puppeteered by the real Sinestro from within the Battery. Parallax then bonds to Jordan, who takes the entity's name for himself, and promptly finishes off the Green Lantern Corps by absorbing the Central Battery's energies into himself. With the Battery destroyed, Sinestro escapes and goes into hiding as he watches Jordan become what he always hated Sinestro for being: a traitor and a murderer reviled by his friends and his allies. Despite this, the last surviving Guardian, Ganthet, gives the last remaining power ring to Kyle Rayner, foiling Sinestro's revenge against the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps.

Duplicate and time travel

During the period when he is believed to be dead, Sinestro has two indirect encounters with other heroes. Wonder Woman faces a duplicate of Sinestro created by an artificial intelligence based on the dead son of its creator. The A.I. created the duplicate Sinestro after watching videos of his old battles, believing that he is just playing a computer game, and unaware of the real-world damage that he is causing. Although he lacks Sinestro's tactical genius, the unrestrained use of his power destroys a bridge and a building, nearly suffocating Wonder Woman before he is defeated by the hero Champion.
On another occasion, Kyle Rayner is accidentally sent approximately a decade into the past, where he witnesses a battle between Hal and Sinestro. Although he initially distracts Hal at a crucial moment, Kyle's ring's immunity to yellow proves vital in preventing Sinestro from executing the Guardians of the Universe. Kyle and Hal subsequently sabotage his attempt to crash a planetoid into Oa by switching rings. Hal allows Sinestro to throw him away before using Kyle's ring to destroy the villain's equipment. Kyle keeps Sinestro occupied, using Hal's ring to protect him from mortal injury. However, after Sinestro's actions result in Hal unintentionally traveling to Kyle's future, this encounter is apparently erased from history when Hal, Kyle, and a Parallax-possessed older Hal Jordan work together to send Hal and Parallax back to their proper place in time to ensure that a Hal Jordan is present with powers to defeat the Sun-Eater, Hal returning to his own time just before Kyle's arrival changes history and defeating Sinestro on his own.
Later, Hal Jordan's Spectre also clashes with the ghost of Sinestro, who traps him in a dream where he never becomes a Green Lantern. Upon his defeat, Sinestro is given the chance to choose his fate. He chooses Hell, and is dragged into the Underworld. In retrospect, it is assumed that this version of Sinestro is another hard light construct created by Parallax at Sinestro's behest, as the fear entity is still bonded to Jordan's soul during his time as the Spectre, continuously breaking his will.