Comic Book Review: Sinestro #3- Sinestro is President Assad of Syria

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Dale Eaglesham & Rags Morales
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 2nd July 2014 (Release date for the UK. Book was released on 25th June in the US)

Comic book fans won’t notice this, but that’s to be expected. Comic book fans don’t really notice anything. They like comics, so reality isn’t exactly their strong point. They think that the important issues of our times are highlighted by the corrupt and dying corporate mainstream media, so you have to expect a certain level of ignorance from the group as a whole. The title of this review is ‘Sinestro is President Assad of Syria,’ because that’s exactly what is happening in this book. What writer Cullen Bunn has done here is to take a real world, contemporary situation, change the names, stick it in space, and see if anybody will notice. They won’t notice Cullen, but I did.

Sinestro is a brutal dictator who was massively unpopular with his own people, so he left. But now that he has left his people desperately need him back. Why? Because a group of religious zealots are rampaging through space, slaughtering the helpless ‘Korugians,’ and selling them into slavery, all in the name of their bloodthirsty religious dogma. Does that sound familiar to you?

We are talking I.S.I.S here, aren’t we? And we are talking the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad. Iraq, Libya and Syria.Three countries ruled by dictators. Well, they used to be until our leaders decided to bomb the crap out of them and fund and train the terrorists who are currently turning their countries into Hell on Earth.

Three countries destroyed by the New World Order. Three countries where the surviving people are being slaughtered by Sunni Islamic terrorists funded from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the US. Last week the liberal saviour President Obama revealed that he was going to give a further $500 million to these maniacs, but because he’s ‘liberal’ I guess that’s okay, right?

Comic books will not, in any way shape or form, criticise Islam. But whilst political correctness dictates that you can’t even give the merest hint that it’s Islam we’re talking about here, it’s perfectly acceptable to attack Christianity. So instead of references to a caliphate, suicide bombings, jihad and other familiar terms you get allusions to Christianity with words like ‘Inquisition, ‘Congregation’ and ‘Bishops.’ That’s understandable. Cullen Bunn has to wrap it up in Christianity. If he didn’t then he’d be in big trouble with the thought Police and his career in comic books would be over. But for those paying attention, we know what this is all about, and it’s not what happened in Spain in the late 1400’s.

I want to end this review by congratulating writer Cullen Bunn. He’s demonstrated that you can explore contemporary issues and concerns in modern, feminist liberal comic books, as long as you are clever with it. You have to dodge the politically correct land mines, but it can be done. Most of the readers of this book won’t see any connection between what is happening in the Middle East and Sinestro’s adventures in space, but that’s okay. Cullen Bunn has done some clever writing here, and he’s done it in such a way that he won’t get criticised for it. If anybody points out what that his themes seem strangely familiar and contemporary, he can just smile and tell them not to be so daft. After all, it’s just a silly comic book about a bad guy in space, isn’t it?
Rating: 10/10