Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman Prime #1 Review

TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS: SUPERMAN PRIME #1
Written by Geoff Johns & Sterling Gates
Art by Pete Woods & Jerry Ordway

The third Tales tie-in is easily the best of the bunch. The Parallax and Cyborg Superman versions were good, don't get me wrong, but they lacked any real impact on the Sinestro Corps War and were more fluff and filler than action story, the Parallax one in particular, that gave backstory and alternate tellings / points of view to events that already happened. The Prime special, however, still retells most of Prime's history, but also gives us the story on what he's doing on Earth while the rest of Corps battles the GL's.

I'll ignore the history lesson for this review. It's a nice framing device for the story and let's anyone unfamiliar with Prime know who he is and what he's done, but is nothing compared with the rest of the issue.

Superman Prime is still a brat, crying over the littlest things and blaming others for every little thing wrong with his life. I'm sure Bart Allen fans will be annoyed that his statue was defaced and later destroyed by Prime. Rule #1 in the DCU, if your name isn't Wally, never become a Flash. Prime's actions suit his character and are in line with how he's been portrayed, but with the name change to SuperMAN Prime, I figured we'd see the character grow up a little into a more mature villain.

I was surprised to see the collection of heroes that showed up to stop Prime. I figured they'd have learned from the last time and come up with a plan that involved something other than dog piling Prime and hoping he doesn't tear anyone's arms off. It seems like the heroes were just getting in each other's way as opposed to working together. Batman, of all people, should have been able to come up with something better than this.

Speaking of tearing off arms, Risk showed up again here to have a nice chat with Prime. If you remember, Prime ripped his arm off back in Infinite Crisis. I'm sure you can piece together what Prime did with his other arm here. Maybe Cyborg can hook the man up with a couple new arms or something.

The Robin / Krypto scene was one of the better parts of the issue. Really enjoyed how it was related back to Conner. From there, Superman, Supergirl and Power Girl all show up after defeating Cyborg Superman, which happened off panel, and proceed to take it to Prime. This is why I hate most of the Super's. They make it look like no one else is even remotely useful in the DCU and that all the problems can be solved with them hitting something until it stops. And what happened with Cyborg Superman? Is that going to be shown in the next GL issue? He was slaughtering Superman in his special and now he's thrown by the wayside and Superman doesn't even have a scratch on him?

There are a few minor problems with the issue, but the good far outweighs the bad here. Entertaining recap of his origin and great action versus all of DC's heroes. However, I can't talk about this special without mentioning the back up story. It's another one of the Book of Parallax tales showing what Lyssa Drak has been up to and giving us a new backstory for another interesting Sinestro Corps member. It was easily one of the best parts of the issue.

Verdict - Must Read. Another great addition to the Sinestro Corps War. Nice refresher course on Prime and lots of action showing what Prime was doing while Sodam Yat was becoming Ion over in GLC.

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