Apparently, Kyle Rayner Likes To Plan Ahead: The Secret Origin of Kylax

In June's Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special, former Green Lantern (and then-Ion) Kyle Rayner was possessed by Parallax, the giant yellow space monster/alien fear god that long ago possessed Hal Jordan, turning him into the villain of "Emerald Twilight" and Zero Hour. Kyle/Parallax immediately transformed Kyle's Ion costume into a new costume that mixed Hal's old Parallax design with Kyle's old Green Lantern costume design.



So did Parallax-in-Kyle come up with that design of the top of his/its/their head?

Actually, it looks like Kyle had been thinking about what his costume design should look like should he ever become Parallaxed at some point for a long, long time—long before he (or anyone but Geoff John) knew that the real reason Hal was all evil and answered to the dumbass codename of Parallax was because there was a giant yellow space monster/alien fear god in him.

About seven years before, actually.

Flipping through 1998's Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins #1 recently, I came across a five-page story called "Kyle Rayner's Sketchbook" by Ron Marz, Paul Pelletier, Darryl Banks and Terry Austin. Basically, Jade finds Kyle's sketchbook and flips through it, and we get a few pages of Banks-sketching-as-Kyle.

Among the images in Kyle's sketchbook is this little gem, which I've chopped out and zoomed in on:


Bravo, Sinestro Corps creative team of Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver. Way to reference an obscure, forgotten piece of Kyle Rayner history from a book I imagine realtively few of those currently digging on DC's Green Lantern books even read into a part of the story.

Now that's and Easter egg.