Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #2

by Steve Englehart (Writer), Bill Willingham (Illustrator), George Freeman (Illustrator)

"Escapist Entertainment"

While imprisoned inside the Sciencells in Oa, Sinestro tells 1,001 stories to the MadGod of Sector 3600, T:D:H:D, to prove to it that the Guardians of the Universe are not as infallible as they think they are.

Genres: Dc Comics, Comic Book

41 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1986

About the author

See also John Harkness.

Steve Englehart went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After a stint in the Army, he moved to New York and began to write for Marvel Comics. That led to long runs on Captain America, The Hulk, The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and a dozen other titles. Midway through that period he moved to California (where he remains), and met and married his wife Terry.

He was finally hired away from Marvel by DC Comics, to be their lead writer and revamp their core characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern). He did, but he also wrote a solo Batman series (immediately dubbed the "definitive" version) that later became Warner Brothers' first Batman film (the good one).

After that he left comics for a time, traveled in Europe for a year, wrote a novel (The Point Man™), and came back to design video games for Atari (E.T., Garfield). But he still liked comics, so he created Coyote™, which within its first year was rated one of America's ten best series. Other projects he owned (Scorpio Rose™, The Djinn™) were mixed with company series (Green Lantern [with Joe Staton], Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four). Meanwhile, he continued his game design for Activision, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Brøderbund.

And once he and Terry had their two sons, Alex and Eric, he naturally told them stories. Rustle's Christmas Adventure was first devised for them. He went on to add a run of mid-grade books to his bibliography, including the DNAgers™ adventure series, and Countdown to Flight, a biography of the Wright brothers selected by NASA as the basis for their school curriculum on the invention of the airplane.

In 1992 Steve was asked to co-create a comics pantheon called the Ultraverse. One of his contributions, The Night Man, became not only a successful comics series, but also a television show. That led to more Hollywood work, including animated series such as Street Fighter, GI Joe, and Team Atlantis for Disney.

Reviews

[Cybernex007 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fairly solid annual as we follow sinestro in prison on Oa tell stories to a trapped god in the cell next to him to try and convince him that the guardians are no longer powerful and to use its power to free them. The first of these stories didn’t impress me very much but the it continually got better and better. But within the cells of Oa, the other prisoners mocked Sinestro for telling these stories and couldn’t believe that a god was trapped in the cell over. The actually story goes that gods form where life worships them, a universe teaming with life created a god that encompassed their universe, and when it was created it immediately took out all life and began moving to the other universes. The lanterns deployed to deal with it were no match and did not return, and the guardians quickly realized they were the only ones that could deal with the threat. Using their power they surrounded the universal god and shrunk it down and imprisoned it. Now it sits silent one cell over as sinestro has been telling stories to it.

We are now on the 999th story, as sinestro tells the story of a mercenary who the guardians hired in secret. The mercenary is brash and the guardians are secretive, and the mercenary wants nothing to do with a planet dealing with a holy war, until they reveal that the prince (a young boy) had been dethroned and imprisoned. The mercenary somewhat relates to this story due to his childhood being terrible and the guardians leverage this to hire him for the job. The mercenary ends up breaking into the palace, immediately getting imprisoned, and ending up in the same cell as the prince where he staged an escape by lighting the mattress on fire. He then lead the prince single handily to the throne and took it back within a few days. Once his mission was complete there was a super corny joke about reading the tag on the mattress to know it would light on fire, and then the guardians appeared to the mercenary, revealing themselves, and turning him into a green lantern. The mercenary was pissed and denied the green lantern role, they lied and manipulated him and they even concluded some people want a life with no strings binding them. Sinestro told this story to show that even the Oans can failed and even as the other prisoners laughed and mocked sinsestro…not a moment later does reality seem to blink!! The life form is starting to think!

The 1000th story tells the story of an older lantern who has been active on a planet for generations, and unknown to the lantern himself his old age is starting to reach his mind. The issue starts with a disaster at a planetary satellite where the lantern was fully available to assist and clean up the devastation before longer lasting effects, but his mind started to slip and instead he flew off to drink tea. The commander in charge saw the tapes of this happening after the incident and flew to speak with the great green lantern and try and explain that his mind is slipping. The green lantern could not believe this but the signs started to appear he was loosing control when he tried to fly away but accidentally attacked the general instead. He flew to the sight where he supposedly didn’t help with an incident, only to find “enemy” ships flying towards him. These ships were part of the same planet he was defending but he couldn’t understand that, it only took hearing the commanders voice when he caught up to the green lantern to finally allow the lantern to see he is fighting his own people. Unable to believe what he is seeing the green lantern flew off again, this time ending up on a moon where a disturbance currently occurring, when he arrived he believed he saw aliens popping out of the ground, but he couldn’t trust his own mind and instead dropped to the ground. The commander showed up and couldn’t believe the green lantern was sitting by, and instead took the ring from the lantern and used it himself to save the day. Sinestro told this story to show that even those with green power can falter and fail. For a single moment the god came to life.

Now we come to the 100th and final story, which is actually written by Alan Moore. It tells the tale of Abin Sur, many years before he died and crashed on earth. At this time he received a distress signal from a crashed ship on a nightmare planet. This planet was quarantined off by the guardians millennia ago when they took over, and the residents of nightmares were chained and left powerless. But Abin has no choice, he has to go down and help the crashed ship. When he arrived the landscape full of chained demons began to tempt him in anyway they could, promising him anything he could desire. Abin then ran across a nailed up demon who promised that he could ask any 3 questions without any charge. Abin decides to take up the creatures offer as the answers are free, and he asks where the crashed ship is located. The creature tells him, and tells him of the only survivor: a child. Abin fearing the creature is lying goes to check out the ship without asking the other 2 questions, and confirms what the creature said is true. He then returned to the creature and asked the other two questions. He first asked about what peril the future holds. The creature told him his future holds death. At some point his ring will loose power and fail and upon his death a new green lantern will be appointed and become one of the greatest amongst his peers. The monster asked if that bothered him, and Abin says it doesn’t, unlikely we the creature is telling the truth anyway. His final question he asks about the greatest catastrophe the green lantern corps has yet to face, and the monster speaks of a final catastrophe where all the enemies of the corps rise up and against them and destroy them all. After everything is done, demons will dance through the ruins of Oa. Abin claims that the future this monster sees is sick with fantasies of revenge and leaves the planet with the child survivor. But as he leaves the creatures laugh as they know they have doomed Abin Sur. And sure enough since they day Abin became obsessed with keeping his ring charged and powered up, he couldn’t let the fear exit his mind and he even went as far as flying around in a ship instead of flying with his ring through space, so he could conserve the power. But then years later he died, the yellow radiation around a planet rendered both him and his start ship useless in an instant. If he had relied solely on his ring he would have detected the radiation before it affected him.

Back in his cell, sinestro began to explain the moral of that story, but instead the world shifted around them and the cells were opened! Quickly sinestro ran out and closed the cell of the alien prisoners who mocked him. They will not share his freedom with those of little faith. But they are now free to try the same method to escape, if the universal god is still trapped. Sinestro is now free!