The theme of Green Lantern 7 (July-Aug. 1961) can be traced back about 2,400 years, to a much earlier “power ring.”
“When given a ring, a shepherd named Gyges becomes invisible and anonymous,” explained Maria Lutgarda Glorioso of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. “Through his invisibility, he seduces a queen, kills her king, and takes over the kingdom. The argument is made that the Ring of Gyges — invisibility and anonymity — is the only barrier between a just and an unjust person.”
The premise of Green Lantern — virtually limitless power available through wishing (i.e., “will power”) — makes the feature particularly apt for musings about the use and abuse of omnipotence (as well as an ongoing metaphor for imagination itself).
“(John) Broome began developing recurring story hooks such as the development of the alien Green Lantern Corps (starting with Tomar-Re in 6), a scenario in which GL would be periodically pulled to the far future 5700 A.D. with an accompanying loss of memory (GL 8) and the introduction of Hal Jordan’s two brothers, one of whom had a snoopy girlfriend who thought her guy was Green Lantern (GL 9),” recalled John Wells in The American Comic Book Chronicles. “He also introduced villainous social climber Hector Hammond (GL 5) and, more significantly, a genuine arch-nemesis called Sinestro who was a former Green Lantern gone bad (7).”
A side note to the Guardians of the Universe: maybe reconsider before entrusting vast powers to someone named “Sinestro.”
Broome’s tales showcase the excitement one would have in possessing a device of such great power, but they also examine its dangers. Several early tales show Hal Jordan courting disaster through the careless or even unconscious use of his ring. And in The Day 100,000 People Vanished!, Broome and artist Gil Kane gave us Hal’s opposite number, an alien member of the Green Lantern Corps whose increasing arrogance in using his power ring gradually transformed him from champion to tyrant.
The Gyges myth is cited in Plato’s Republic, with Socrates arguing that the man who uses the Ring of Gyges to run riot has enslaved himself to his appetites. But the person who refuses to use it remains rationally in control of himself and is therefore happy, Socrates said.
JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings underlines Socrates’ point.
“By demonstrating the corrupting effects of the power of invisibility, (H.G. Wells’ novel) The Invisible Man is a retelling of Plato’s myth of the ring of Gyges,” wrote Philip Ball in The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen. “It isn’t clear if this was Wells’ explicit aim, but that seems likely.”
For Sinestro’s misuse of his ring, the Guardians strip him of power and banish him to the antimatter universe of Qward, where the moral polarities are reversed — where evil is worshipped, and good despised.
Feeling right at home, Sinestro plots with the Qwardians to viso-teleport their enemy Green Lantern, along with the 100,000 residents of the city of Valdale, into their malevolent universe.
“The depiction of Sinestro’s corruption at the start of this story is a major piece of storytelling,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost. “It offers an unusually plausible view of how power and vanity can corrupt a person. The story is part fable, part realistic drama, part political text. It serves as a key warning to readers of the magazine: it is designed to be didactic, to hold up a model to readers to warn them against, a reminder they can check on in their own lives to swerve them from these paths.”
Early on in his frequent reappearances, the amoral Sinestro acquires a yellow power ring. Being the color of a “necessary impurity in the power battery,” the ring serves as a visual reminder of Sinestro’s corruption.
“Sinestro’s story has several antecedents,” Grost noted. “In part, it recalls the fall of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, with Sinestro recalling the renegade archangel of that epic poem. One can certainly see the Guardians as representing a Divine Power, the Green Lanterns as the angels, Sinestro as the fallen angel Satan, and Qward to which he is banished as Hell.
“But Sinestro also is a portrait of all the dictators who have plagued the 20th Century. He is similar to how many Americans in 1961 viewed Fidel Castro: they had supported him in the early days of his struggle against Battista, only to watch him convert himself into a Communist dictator. Sinestro is searching for only one thing throughout his appearances: a chance to become a dictator again.”
“The central world Oa on which the Guardians live recalls the planet Trantor in Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy (1941 – 1950),” Grost wrote. “The banishment to Qward anticipates the banishment of criminals to the Phantom Zone in the Superman family. And the attack on dictators here recalls similar attacks on dictators in the Superman comic book.”
Grost also pointed out several parallels between Sinestro and Gorilla Grodd, a supervillain Broome had created earlier for The Flash. Both Sinestro and Grodd are extremely intelligent, powerful, and power-hungry; both are renegades from a benevolent super-civilization; both get jailed in “escape-proof cages” from which their brilliant planning has freed them by the time the next story begins.
It is also worth noting that Sinestro’s dark fate was ultimately visited on Hal Jordan himself decades later, ominously underlining the Gyges theme.
“Eventually, unable to come up with anything else to keep the character ‘fresh’ in the eyes of its crisis-jaded audience, writers reduced his hometown to slag, drove him berserk, and sent him on a murderous spree of killing his fellow Green Lanterns,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “He ended up the only decent way a character treated so shabbily can possibly end — dead. The final blow was delivered in the company-wide crossover mini-series Zero Hour, published in 1994. By that time, his place in the DC Universe had been taken by an even newer Green Lantern.
“But neither his disgrace nor his demise could still the voices of his many fans. He recovered from death, as superheroes sometimes do, in another crossover mini-series titled Final Night — but at the end, was killed even deader. In 1999, DC brought him back again as a new incarnation of The Spectre, an immortal entity who usually takes on the persona of a restless spirit.
“As restless as Hal Jordan’s spirit must have been, with all those sins to atone for, one would think he’d continue to be the Spectre for a long time to come. But no — in the 2004-05 mini-series Green Lantern: Rebirth, it all got erased. He’s back again to being Green Lantern, and the future is as wide open as if it had never happened.”
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