Evil Star
1897 - Sloane is born on the planet Aoran.
1917 - 20-year-old Sloane begins training as a scientist, studying strange energies.
1921 - 24-year-old Sloane's mother is killed by his father. Obsessed with death, he begins his research into manipulating life energy, using Oan technology as a base for his research.
1926 - 29-year-old Sloane develops his planetary engines, which channel the energy of his planet into his Star Bands, granting him a form of immortality, but also warping his consciousness and morality. He takes on the identity of 'Evil Star', dedicating himself to only evil actions. He designs his technology to mask it from the Green Lanterns.
1940 - 43-year-old Evil Star's technology begins to expand its influence, allowing him to control others, making them act in only evil ways. He begins his plans of planetary conquest and galactic domination.
1946 - 49-year-old Evil Star succeeds in bringing his entire planet under his control. His cloned Starlings begin to strike out into open space, looking for new planets to control.
1948 - 51-year-old Evil Star's Starlings find Earth, where they fight Alan Scott. He pursues them into space, where he meets Abin Sur. They track the Starlings to Aoran, where they confront Evil Star, whose technology successfully counteracts their constructs. Alan Scott sacrifices himself by overloading the Starheart, disabling all of Evil Star's technology and saving the planet. Evil Star dies in the aftermath.
Evil Star was actually on the list of characters we were deliberately excluding, because he wasn't unique enough for us to find something to do with him. Even at the time, there was the sense that there might be a role for him down the line, though. As we started to rethink Alan Scott's story, we found ourselves needing a space-going despot that could, if done right, challenge both Alan AND Abin Sur at the same time. Suddenly Evil Star seemed like he could fit the bill, but we'd have to get him just right. Did we pull it off? Let us know...
Evil Star's Comic HistoryEvil Star isn't a commonly recurring Green Lantern villain. He showed up for the first time in Green Lantern #37 in 1965, and never really evolved that much in his few appearances afterward. He didn't have much of a backstory, other than that he was a scientist that had mastered the energies of the stars to built the Star Bands, a weapon that matched Hal's power ring, and as he put it; "compels it's possessor to employ it only for evil purposes!"
Ultimately this is probably the one idea that makes Evil Star such a weird character to try to use... he's so aware of and committed to the idea of being capital E Evil that it's in his name. He doesn't actually have a real name other than Evil Star... we gave him the name Sloane, but that's actually a name derived from another character in the same issue where he debuted. In addition to the Star Bands, Evil Star also created his own small army of weird little mindless underlings in the Starlings, artificial beings with no will of their own who follow him with no regard for their own safety, basically making him his own weird little mad scientist version of the Lantern Corp. |
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Our Evil Star StorySo why does Evil Star work for us in this particular role? Simply put, we need a threat that can bring Alan Scott off-planet where he can meet Abin Sur, one dangerous enough that could challenge them both together, and that would require Alan Scott to use so much of his power to defeat that it would take decades of treatment with Oan technology to rebuild him so that he can return to Earth.
Whatever else he is, Evil Star is a collection of threatening IDEAS. He has offensive weapons that are at least a match for the Lantern constructs, which makes more sense if we imagine that his technology is all based on having researched Oan technology. The Starlings give us an army they can fight. And perhaps most importantly, he has elements of planetary mind control. Saving a whole planetary population from the influence of Evil Star's technology is an excellent catalyst for Alan's noble sacrifice. Evil Star as he appears in the comics is a little too odd to be a regularly occurring villain, but he's practically tailor-made for the story we're looking to tell. |