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Sunday 27 November 2016

Red Lanterns, Volume 6: Forged in Blood Review (Charles Soule, Jim Calafiore)


Charles Soule’s pretty decent Red Lanterns run goes out limply with this sixth and final volume. Red Lantern Guy Gardner teams up with Green Lantern Simon Baz to battle the New Gods of Apokolips - ooo, exciting! - and then halfway through the book that storyline is abandoned. Oh… I guess it was part of a crossover event or tie-in and got completed elsewhere? Fuck’s sake, DC… 

Then Soule disappears and Landry Q. Walker takes over on a new storyline... that begins in the middle! Why… 

Atrocitus apparently visited Earth and caused some damage that Guy is now mopping up. I felt gypped as we only get to see the dull aftermath once the interesting stuff was over. 

But we’re not done with the idiotic jumping-around-in-time as the final issue sees Soule return but take the Red Lanterns story five years in the future for no reason! This is also the only time any Red Lanterns besides Guy Gardner appears as we see what happened to Bleez and Rankorr. 

J. Calafiore’s art isn’t bad but it’s not terribly exciting - standard superhero fare and very much DC house style. Landry Q. Walker’s issues were poorly written and forgettable while Charles Soule’s were slightly better but still not very compelling, and the disjointed structure of the book ruined it for me. 

So ends New 52 Red Lanterns: badly. Easy to see why they didn’t come back in Rebirth!

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