In brightest day, in far-off night

I've just finished the Sinestro Corps War Part 11 in Green Lantern 25. I've yet to read, also in this week's pile of comics, Green Lantern Corps 19 (epilogue) and Ion 1 (spin-off). I have read all the Sinestro Corps specials - Superman Prime, Anti-Monitor and Cyborg Superman - and the odd tie-in such as Blue Beetle 20. That's a lot of comics but the promise of a crossover pretty much contained with one family of DC books, one with an actual ending, was refreshing . . .

. . . until I got to the so-called end. GL 25, the supposed climax of the story, features the Sinestro Corps defeated. But are they jailed? Nope, they escape to lick their wounds. One of those floaty Guardians of the Universe conflabs tells us that: 'Members of the Sinesstro Corps retreat into the darkest corners of the universe.' and 'They will rebuild their central power battery, they will no doubt continue to spread fear.'

Darn. But at least their leader is arrested. And three pages later Sinestro is sitting in a cell, smirking as the little blue men decide to enact the second of the 'Ten New Laws of Oa'. He has every right to smirk because, as he pointed out to the Lanterns, he's sorta won: enacting the first new law, allowing GLs to use lethal force, will spread fear - his currency -throughout the universe, because good and bad alike will tremble at the thought of Hal and co being willing to kill.

Oh well, at least Superboyman Prime got his, as a self-sacrificing Guardian explodes, stripping Prime down to his skeleton. Hurrah . . . huh? Four pages later we're told that he has 'warped into the Multiverse'. Don't all these stories take place in the Multiverse? Anyway, he's floating in space, his body showing no obvious signs of lacking a skeleton, and wide-eyed with excitement at something he sees.

But we did get the bittersweet end of the Cyborg-Superman, who finally has his wish to die granted. Shame that before issue's end his android Manhunter pals are putting him back together again.

Never mind, at least we got rid of the Anti-Monitor, reduced to half a skeleton by Prime and tossed into space, never to be seen again - until he shows up on the last few pages, slotted into someone's plan for . . the Black Lantern. Goodness, who could have seen that coming, after all the waffling about a rainbow of lanterns (blue for hope, violet for love etc etc zzzz) and talk of the Blackest Night?

So apart from a few dead Sinestro Corps members . . . oh, hang on, In The Grand Tradition of Justice Society of America 1 the final page becomes an advert for upcoming events. The aforementioned Black Lantern is going to ensure that 'across the universe, the dead will rise'. So the departed Sinestro Corps won't be dead for long. We're told this in a series of statements that minic cinema trails ('In a world . . .'). Geoff Johns works in film production as well as comics, and he knows what works in, er, cinema.

And when is this grand sequel showing up. Summer 2009. SODDING SUMMER 2009.

So the villains survive, the heroes are compromised and the story is not only not over, it won't resume for a year at least.

I am so sick of DC Comics. The never-ending battle was once Superman's catchphrase, not loyal readers' attempts to stay afloat while buying more and more comics in the vain hope of getting to the end of a story. Yes, the journey is important, and yes, I enjoyed much of the ride that was the Sinestro Corps War, but my pleasure is diminished by the lack of a conclusion, the story becoming bloated as DC added more issues because we readers were responding positively to the story. That we were; and one of the main things we liked was the finite nature of it. But, as the story got bigger, things got muddier - there was so much going on it was difficult to know where to focus, what to care about. And we actually believed we'd get an ending. More fool us.

Is there a colour for gullability?