Well, we’ve moved into high gear now in the Sinestro Corps, with titles pretty much every week for the next month or two.

This week’s is the Parallax one-shot, written by Ron Marz. Its a nice issue, although doesn’t really move the story along. Instead we get Kyle, trapped in his own head, looking out on what Parallax is doing, and facing off against the bug itself.

I suppose the first thing to say, is that this issue doesn’t really move the larger story along much. While it does act probably as a bit of setup to Kyle eventually getting free, its largely just about taking a sidestep and letting us see exactly what’s happening with Kyle at this point.

The really interesting thing is how removed Kyle is from events. Although his body is out there, killing GLs, Kyle himself is very much separated from events. This issue seems to underline a fundemental difference between the two Parallax-possessions we’ve seen. Hal was very much being influenced by Parallax, but still aware of what he was doing. While Parallax takes most of the blame for Hal’s actions, Hal still feels a measure of responsibility for them.

Kyle on the other hand is very much controlled by Parallax. He has no say in what he’s doing at all, being isolated in his own head from exterior goings-on, only able to view. From what we’ve seen here, Kyle should come out of this all blameless. Parallax is obviously drawing on Kyle’s subconciousness from some of what he says an does, but Kyle himself is very much fighting against Parallax. This partly will explain how Kyle is running around Countdown acting as if none of this has happened. Unlike Hal, he has the luxury of knowing he’s blameless.

Once again Kyle’s track record with women is brought up, but its nice to see it doesn’t really work against him. Parallax tries goading Kyle about his girlfriends ending up dead, but Kyle is really past that at this point.

We also get the first sign of Kyle shedding the Ion identity and reclaiming his Green Lantern self. One thing this scene underlined for me was a key problem with Ion. No two artists draw the suit the same, and it really bugs me. The only version that ever really worked for me was when Ivan Reis draws it. In this case, I hope Kyle’s new GL suit is drawn more consistently (although its off to a bad start, with his logo changing colour, and crab mask vanishing - infact this week’s Countdown he appears in Hal’s suit for no reason whatsoever).

It was nice seeing Kyle in the Banks suit again. And interesting that that’s the costume Kyle went back to, rather than his Jim Lee suit (although not a surprise perhaps, since that’s the suit he used when written by Ron Marz, who also wrote this). I wonder if there’s going to be anything symbolic referenced in the Ion one-shot about that choice.

The issue ends with Kyle walking towards a green light in a painting made by his mother. I like the idea that his artistic side came from his mother. Its something that was never touched on in the series, and it gives him something tangible to remember her by. The significance of the green light will be interesting. Obviously Kyle is now not as lost as he was.

What can I say about the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special? Well, I really like Amanda Conner’s art. It was great fun in the Power Girl arc in JSA Classified, and its great fun here.

The comic itself isn’t bad. But what annoys me is that the whole Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding has just been a lot of style and no substance. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s been a lot of fun stuff. The Wedding Planner issue was a hoot. But I’ve not seen anything yet that’s waylaid my fears that Black Canary’s going to come out of this a worse character.

As for the wedding itself? Well, I don’t want to spoil too much, but there are various things in the book that are grating on me.

1. Black Canary’s wedding “dress”. Ok, so I know the wedding had all the guests in costume. But still, I can’t be the only one who’d have liked her to have a proper wedding dress instead of that outfit.
2. The wedding dress is spoiled both on the cover, and in the preview that came out a couple of weeks ago. The bride’s first appearance in her dress should be a big shock, “oh wow!” moment. Of course, given the “dress” itself…
3. There’s no wedding. So, I’m reading a comic called the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special. At the start of it, they’re not married, and at the end they are. Ummm, shouldn’t we have seen some “I do’s” in there? Just a thought…

As I said, some fun comics came out of this, and I loved Amanda Conner’s art. But ultimately, it was a bit of a gyp for those people that were actually wanting to see a wedding.

Next “Wedding Special” DC puts on the stands, I think I’ll wait for the spoilers.