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It began with Guardians of the Universe. A dozen, or so, blue-skinned,
white-haired dwarfs with enormous power and a desire to bring order to the
universe. First, they condensed a large portion of the mystical power of the
universe into one small package, hiding it in the heart of a star. Then they
experimented with various methods of maintaining order in a chaotic
universe.
Somewhere along the way, they managed to draw the attention, and the enmity,
of the inhabitants of a neighboring universe. This universe is composed
primarily of anti-matter, matter which, for all intents and purposes, is a
mirror image of ordinary matter.. Matter and anti-matter are mutually
destructive to one another. The inhabitants of this anti-matter universe
refer to it as Qward, and we were first introduced to them in the pages of
Green Lantern, when he faced the pink-skinned, bug-eyed Thunderers, the
foot-soldiers of the Weaponers of Qward.
Hal Jordan, and his fellow Green Lanterns would sometimes have to travel to
the anti-matter universe to oppose the Weaponers of Qward, using their power
rings to convert their bodies to anti-matter, to prevent their own immediate
destruction. The Weaponers, privy to the weaknesses of the Green Lanterns'
power rings, designed their weapons to produce energy and effects in the
yellow range of the spectrum. When the rogue Green Lantern known as Sinestro
(was that his birth name? What were his parents thinking??) was cashiered,
the Weaponers of Qward outfitted him with a yellow version of the power
ring, which drew it's energy from conflict with Green Lanterns' power beams.
Typical of the period, Sinestro was an alien with a humanoid physique, but
with an enlarged head and unusual skin color, in this case, magenta. Later,
we would learn that he was of the same race as Abin Sur, the Green Lantern
whose ring passed to Hal Jordan, making Hal the GL of Sector 2814.
From the beginning, Sinestro was Hal Jordan's chief nemesis, even while he
was a Green Lantern. As one of the GL's "training officers", Sinestro was
Hal's harshest critic. A humorless perfectionist, his personality extremes
would eventually lead him to world domination, dismissal from the Green
Lantern Corps, and eventually, to his death.
I always thought Sinestro's costume looked ridiculous. Here he was, a major
super-villain and he wore a jester's costume. Take another look at it, if
those points around his neck had little bells on them and his boot toes came
to a curly point, he'd be a somewhat drab court jester! I'm surprised he
didn't win more fights just because the heroes were laughing at him.
Others have used Sinestro's yellow power ring, since his execution. Guy
Gardner, for one, used the ring in his first post-GL identity and recently
Kyle Rayner's old adversary, Fatality showed up with it, only to have it
snatched away from her at the end of one story. It cost her an arm, and
probably did nothing to endear her to the Weaponers of Qward, in the end.
After Fatality, the ring was passed to a young mental patient, whose
artistic expression of his illness causes him to draw a variety of horrors.
Kyle Rayner, a commercial artist, would seem to be his opposite.
Armed with the yellow power ring, will power fueled by his twisted outlook
on the world, he escaped the mental institution. On a rampage in New York,
calling himself "Nero", he first came into contact with Earth's first Green
Lantern, Alan Scott. Kyle soon joined the battle, with the psycopathic
ring-slinger, which would eventually include the entire Justice League.
Darryl Banks may be the most under-rated penciler in comics. Since the
advent of the current GL, his style and design sense has guided the look of
the book, even when he's not drawing it. It's Darryl who comes up with all
those intricate and fantastic creatures, gadgets and other green-glowing
constructs Kyle Rayner uses to fight the good fight. It was Banks' redesign
of the lantern symbol, making it one of the most distinctive and striking
designs in comics. His costume design, for Kyle, is equally distinctive, so
it makes me wonder why the villain who should become Kyle's nemesis should
have such a dull costume.
I'll accept that the guy is psychotic and may not care about such things.
But I think, after fighting Kyle, he might want to design himself a
distinctive costume, skewing Kyle's design, somewhat. Perhaps the ring has a
memory, like the power rings of the Guardians, which spit out the standard
GL uniform, for every user, so it might suggest the colors of it's former
master, Sinestro.
As a name, I suppose Nero is as good a villain name as you could possibly
draw from history. Might as well use it.
A little aside . . .
A couple of years ago, I was playing around with some promotional artwork,
on my computer and came up with an idea for an adversary, for Kyle. At the
time, the Qwardians were pretty quiet, so I thought it was time for them to
rear their bug-eyed heads, again and introduce Kyle to some new levels of
pain and anguish.
The idea came from inverting the colors of this promotional artwork from GL
#100 or some such issue. Using Kyle, the black and white areas switched, of
course and the green parts of his costume became a bright violet, the
glowing green energy, became various shades of violet and looked
unbelievably eerie. I thought, since the Qwardians are anti-matter, they
might produce a ring which generated energy in the opposite frequencies of
the Guardians' green energy. Like matter and anti-matter, the new ring might
even destroy the green energy constructs, in a similar fashion.
I never worked out the details of the costume and character to my
satisfaction, but it's still there, in the back of my brain. Maybe
someday . . .
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