My habit of picking DC titles at random just because they're available and look vaguely intriguing continues. Again, I don't know DC well other than through cultural osmosis.

It's obvious in this volume that there is a TON of Green Lantern backstory I have no idea of, but I think the overall story did alright in trying to settle Sinestro and Hal Jordan in a place that sort of makes sense. Their antagonistic relationship makes sense, Hal's loser era makes sense, Sinestro makes sense.

The only thing that really kept this from being enjoyable for me was the actual writing - I kept being smacked in the face over and over and over with "Hal and Sinestro hate each other and Sinestro thinks he's doing the Right Thing and Hal thinks he's the worst guy ever and Hal is a loser and and and--"

It's so overwrought and gives the audience NO chances whatsoever to come to any emotional conclusions on their own. The very definition of telling and not showing. Every character explains their every feeling and motivation on page for us to see. It sucks, because the set up for the story itself is intriguing.

The art is...something, I guess. If you ignore everyone's constipated faces and the fact that this artist will only draw complicated line art for the males and aliens but completely smooth, featureless faces for any female-presenting character...it's fine. Even cool, when taking the larger panels and action oriented pages in. The faces, though. Yuck.

I wish this had been better.