Paneling: Tales Of The Green Lantern Corps Annual #2

As of this writing, it’s Halloween, so I thought it only appropriate to take a look at a spooky panel from a spooky story.

This one comes from a 1986 story by Alan Moore and the late Kevin O’Neill that was one of several stories featured in an anthology of stories about the Green Lantern Corps.

One of the things that stood out for me about this issue at the time is something that’s not there: the Comics Code Authority Seal of Approval.

At this point, especially for DC, it wasn’t unheard of for a book to hit the stands and spinner racks without Code approval, but it was still noteworthy when it happened.

I can’t say with any certainty, but my assumption is that the reason it didn’t get approved was the story that provides the panel we’ll be looking at. (Edit: Yep.)

Specifically, the art by O’Neill, whose wonderfully horrifying imagination led to some of the most stunningly, luridly horrific images anyone has ever seen to the extent that I recall reading that his style itself was deemed obscene in the UK.

Indeed, it was seeing some of that imagery rendered by another artist in a post on Bluesky that brought this panel to mind.

In any case, as noted, this issue is an anthology, and it has a framing device that involves criminals captured by the Green Lantern Corps locked in cells on the planet Oa.

One of the prisoners is former Green Lantern turned dastardly villain Sinestro, who has been annoying his neighbors by constantly telling stories to the apparently empty cell next to him.

Sinestro insists that the cell is not empty and that it actually holds an entire sector of space.

This “lost” sector of space once had trillions of inhabitants, but one of those inhabitants, a god, went mad and destroyed all life in its sector, ultimately merging with the sector itself and setting its sights on the destruction of other sectors.

After several Green Lanters died attempting to reign it in, the Guardians themselves finally took matters into their own hands and imprisoned the mad god.

But its prison was primarily one of mind. The Guardians had one by convincing the sector that they were its betters, and thus the only thing keeping it locked in its cell was its own fear.

Sinestro, in the hopes that he can ride on its coattails and escape himself, is telling the sector stories of the failures of the Guardians in an attempt to convince it that they aren’t all that.

After 1,000 tales, there are indications that this gambit is working.

Which leads us to the final tale, the story of the death of Abin Sur, once the greatest of all Green Lanterns.

In this tale, Abin Sur is on a mission to a demon-haunted world that has been quarantined by the Guardians, looking for the survivors of a downed spaceship.

One of the terrifying demons whose evil the Guardians locked away from the rest of the universe – whose design is probably what killed the chances of the book getting Code approval – offers to answer three questions posed by Abin Sur.

However, the answers may be true, may be lies, or may be a mix of both. The first – truthful – answer leads Abin to the sole survivor of the crash.

The second is about Abin Sur’s ultimate fate. The demon tells him that his ring will fail him one day, though it doesn’t specify how. Abin doesn’t know it, but his part is a lie. It also notes that Abin Sur’s replacement – and this part is true – will surpass him as the greatest of all Lanterns.

The demon then goes on to describe the greatest peril that will be faced by the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians.

Abin Sur is dismissive of the demon’s claims, at least on the surface, but a seed has been planted, as we see in the sixth panel of the story’s tenth page.

There are plenty of disturbing panels to choose from in this story, but this one always stood out for me because of the lady-shaped tongue-headed demon with the flowers sticking out of her throat-mouth.

In any case, the seed planted in Abin Sur’s mind is the idea of his ring failing him, which leads him to start relying a ship when travelling great distances, and it is that ship’s failure in the Earth’s atmosphere that leads to his death, and the selection of his replacement, Hal Jordan (who ruins everything, even though people keep insisting he’s the greatest Green Lantern there is or ever was).

Back on Oa, this is the story that does the trick. Reality blinks with the awakening of the mad space sector, temporarily opening the cells and allowing Sinestro to escape.

Before any of the other prisoners can do the same, he re-seals the cells and tells them that they need to find their own way out, but perhaps the lost sector is still there and eager to hear more stories…

The imagery of that last story has stuck with me throughout the decades, and clearly I’m not the only one.

Writer Geoff Johns is about my age, and it’s very clear that the story had an impact on him, as he built on the tale told by the demon during his run on Green Lantern, including formally introducing a character who gets a brief mention.