"I'm
not going to lose to a freaking bug!"
- Kyle Rayner, Tales
of the Sinestro Corps: Parallax
From the
moment I read that Ron Marz would be writing an installment
in the Sinestro Corps War I very much eagerly anticipated
what he would bring to the table in this "Tales of the
Sinestro Corps" special. No bones about it, it's the man
that got me into Green Lantern in 1994 with the "hot button"
Emerald Twilight 3-parter (I'd never even considered picking
up a Green Lantern title until I read of the shakeups in
Wizard and then spied #49 and #50 on stands).
As we get
started we see Kyle Rayner trapped within his mind, a kind
of metaphorical glass house (his old house, actually, given
ethereal substance) from which he watches reality wage on
outside -- namely, his physical self which is currently
possessed by the incarnate of fear itself, Parallax.
I have to
admit, it kind of makes me crack a grin to see Marz writing
Parallax -- his own brainchild -- as the parasite "bug"
(Kyle himself coins the phrase in this issue). Contrary to
what a lot of militant anti-Emerald Twilight,
anti-anything-Ron-Marz-on-Green Lantern tali-fans tend to
think, this guy is a team player. In 1994 he wasn't doing a
smear job on the character, but jumping onto and developing
an already pre-determined course of action (and doing a
damned good job of it, I'd say, as with nearly of all of his 90s works...
like his stories or hate them, he hooked me and pretty much
an entire generation on GL); here in 2007, he's doing it
again, only now the vehicle is the "Sinestro Corps War." It
was very sad to see the gears shifted on the Ion maxi-series
(that was reportedly actually set to be an ongoing until it
was decided to end it and transition it into the events of
the Sinestro Corps War)... I got a profound sense in the
momentum-building issues of Ion that there was going to be a
very specific direction Ron would be taking things as we
proceeded; now we have Kyle as Parallax, Kyle as a Green
Lantern over in Countdown/The Search for Ray Palmer, and
around December will see Kyle being put into the cast of the
Green Lantern Corps monthly -- I'm not going to argue the
validity of any of these decisions here, but I will say it's
a damned shame we may not ever get to know where Ron was
going with Ion.
I digress...
Kicking
things off, he the painting of Kyle's mom's we heard
alluded to back in the Sinestro Corps War Special. In the
painting a boy is lost within a field, unable to find his
way home. He laments his inability to keep Parallax out as a
result of his mother's death, and what Sinestro revealed
about the cause.
Looking out a
"window," Kyle sees himself in the real world beating up Hal
Jordan within the events of Green Lantern #22. As we go even
further, we see his murder of Jack T. Chance
(his
apparent murder... Jack has come back from worse, hasn't
he?) while a mental
projection of his real world self as Parallax (who I'll
refer to as Kylax from this point on for the sake of
confusion) appearing before him within his mind.
"I take
the time to visit, and you act like you're not even glad to
see me."
"How about
'go **** yourself.' How's that?"
Goading Kyle
into a requiem for the "track record" of dead women who have
touched his life, Kyle changes into Ion and, for a nice
showing, we get a bit of honest-to-goodness Ion vs. Kylax
action that's pretty satisfying to see -- even while the
battlefield is only Kyle's mind, we quickly forget this as
we get into the thick of things. We get a big sense of Kyle
actually battling his inner demons that have haunted him at
the same time he is literally fighting Kylax, and then in
the very end we learn something about that painting from the
beginning that gives us very strong reason to believe this
whole experience has been more than a little cathartic for
him in the bigger picture of the War.
While
the nonstop page-for-page action (which has been great so
far, like a nonstop thrillride) of the Sinestro Corps War
issues so far haven't afforded an opportunity to touch on
many of the more personal aspects of the War itself (I'd
stop short of saying they haven't touched on any),
here's an issue that does just that with a key player that
might deserve it the most after the ringer he's been run
through (though I suppose a good case might be made for John
Stewart as well).
This issue is
a personal battle, and a brutally eye-pleasing one at that.
I'm happy to report this is Ron Marz at the top of his game
here; the art team of Adriana Alquiza and Jason Wright seem
like the first in a very short list of worthy successors (on
a Kyle book) to the great Darryl Banks... but hey, let's be
honest here -- just about anyone that
gets the crab-mask right (it's pancake free here!) gets a
big thumbs up from me!
Would urge
readers to pick up Ron Marz' "Countdown: The Search for Ray
Palmer - Wildstorm #1" from last week as well -- though it
kind of takes us into post-Sinestro Corps War times, for the
first time in a long time we get to see Kyle doing a bit of
ringslinging!
