Superman Becomes a Yellow Lantern to Fight Sinestro

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Superman #29, written by Keith Champagne with art by Doug Mahnke and Jaime Mendoza, on sale now.

Superman is one of the strongest and most confident superheroes in the DC Universe, but even he has the ability to feel fear. It’s part of what makes him so great; the ability to know fear is directly linked to the ability to feel empathy, and Superman is inarguably one of the most empathetic heroes in all of comics.

But to the right villain, the ability to feel fear is a major weakness to be exploited. Superman usually doesn’t have too much of a problem dealing with his own villains, like Lex Luthor, Brainiac or Mongul, but against another hero’s arch-enemies, he can easily be caught by surprise. That’s exactly what happened in the lates issue of Superman, as The Man of Tomorrow came up against the full power of the yellow light of fear.

Fear Itself

The crux of the issue centers around a number of missing children in Metropolis and Superman’s pledge to their parents to find them and bring them home safe, while one of the missing children is seemingly responsible for the abductions. Superman is able to trace a strange energy to the child as he abducts yet another kid and when confronted by Superman, both children prove to have an immense power that doesn’t just floor Superman, it knocks him clean unconscious.

After regaining his composure, Superman is able to follow the yellow light of fear to an abandoned hospital where he finds the missing children embedded in a web of fear infecting the whole city. He confronts the entity controlling the children by name revealing the true form of Parallax, the fear entity which powers the Yellow Lanterns’ rings and was once responsible for the entire destruction of the Green Lantern Corps. As the two begin to fight, Parallax exploits the children’s fear to grow in power and in a desperate bid to save them, Superman offers himself up to the fear entity in their place, allowing Parallax to possess one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe. The only person who can save Earth from the Parallax infested Superman is Sinestro, who arrives on the scene looking to reclaim Parallax for himself.

Fallen Hero

Parallax has inhabited many beings in the DC Universe, but the yellow fear bug seen in this issue is a retcon added to the Green Lantern mythos a decade after Parallax’s first introduction. Originally, Parallax was the name Hal Jordan took after he was driven mad by the destruction of Coast City and became a cosmic supervillain. He wiped out the Green Lantern Corps and tried to rewrite reality itself. Luckily, Hal's good nature won through when it was needed most, and he sacrificed himself to reignite the sun during Earth’s Final Night. Hal later went on to become the new incarnation of The Spectre as an attempt to atone for his genocidal actions, before eventually returning to the land of the living and once again becoming a member of the GLC.

It was later revealed that Parallax was the entity of fear we know it to be today, and that for millennia it was prisoner within the Central Power Battery on Oa. However, because the Power Battery is linked to all Green Lantern rings, it was able to worm its way into Hal Jordan, slowly at first and then all at once following the destruction of Coast City. During the time in which Hal was The Spectre, it came to light that he was not responsible for the actions of Parallax and Hal, The Spectre and Parallax were separated from each other, restoring Hal to life.

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The Possessed

Since the revelation that Parallax is a sentient entity that represents and is powered by all fear in the universe, it has possessed a number of other individuals. Not long after Hal Jordan’s resurrection, it possessed the Guardian of the Universe, Ganthet but was defeated by the combined power of Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner and Kilowog thanks to the knowledge that being a Green Lantern isn’t about being without fear, it’s about the ability to overcome great fear. This knowledge allowed them to overcome Parallax, free Ganthet and removed the yellow impurity from the Green Lantern rings, which had been a source of weakness in the weapons for thousands of years.

Parallax possessed Kyle Rayner during The Sinestro Corps War following the revelation that Sinestro had Kyle’s mother killed, when The Torchbearer was at his most vulnerable. Hal Jordan allowed himself to be absorbed into the Parallax gestalt to bring Kyle home and free them both from its control, with Ganthet trapping the entity inside the four power batteries of the Earth’s Green Lanterns. Hal Jordan was later forced to submit to Parallax during the Blackest Night as The Spectre had been overtaken by the power of the Black Lantern rings. Hal was able to free The Spectre and escape the clutches of Parallax thanks to the overwhelming love shared between himself and Carol Ferris, and the fear entity disappeared to an unknown location.

After discovering that all the emotional entities had gone missing, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen teamed up to find them but upon locating Parallax, The Flash was infected and became its new host, with all the powers of the universe’s fear coupled with the power of the Speed Force. Although he was freed from Parallax’s control by the indigo entity of compassion Proselyte, it turned out to be a trap so that Krona could capture all of the entities. The mad Guardian then returned Parallax to the Central Power Battery as a way to control the Green Lantern Corps and Guy Gardner was forced to destroy it in order to free Parallax and free the Green Lanterns from Krona’s control.

Since then, Parallax has been in Sinestro’s control as the first person to maintain dominance over the fear entity and harness its power without having their personality overridden by it. Sinestro crafted a Fear Engine to power Parallax to one thousand times its natural power, but upon facing Hal Jordan he began to lose control due his daughter Soranik Natu dismantling his creation. Sinestro and Parallax were both thought destroyed by Hal Jordan at the start of DC Rebirth, but recent events in Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps have proven that to not be the case, and now we have a Man of Steel possessed by the fear entity and a Sinestro who desperately wants his power back. The next issue of Superman is only a week away, but it promises to be a colossal smackdown between the two.