Release Date: June 6, 2012
Cover Date: August 2012
Story: Peter Milligan
Art: Miguel Sepulveda
Cover: Miguel Sepulveda
Atrocitus tracks what he thinks is Abysmus, but instead, it’s Skallox’s ring inside Stormwatch’s headquarters. He breaks in and makes fairly short work of the team, but of course it’s all one big misunderstanding. He agrees to leave with the newly revived Skallox, as finding a fix for the Central Power Battery is paramount, but he vows revenge on Stormwatch. Meanwhile, Rankorr proves to the other Red Lanterns that he is not to be trifled with, and they descend upon Zamaron to deal with the Star Sapphires.
Well, this issue was better than the first part of the crossover, but not by a lot. (It’s also better than Red Lanterns #9, but that didn’t take much.) Like those past issues, the random quirks and errors within just brought the story to a screeching halt.
Since when could Atrocitus just rend spacetime at a whim? That’s a skill that would’ve been most useful in the Red Lanterns’ many conflicts. Hell, he could easily take out Guardians with that kind of power! Also…how could he not know that he was tracking a red power ring signature? Granted, the hidden Stormwatch base may have masked it somewhat, but power ring energies are pretty unique. Since Atrocitus created the red ones, he should know it better than anyone. Midnighter knocking out Dex-Starr was of course meant to be funny…but it seemed just thrown into the story, and had no relevance to either the main plot or the subplot. In other words, a waste.
Moving on to the good stuff, I did like how Stormwatch considers the Green Lantern Corps to be a major threat. Clearly, they only see it that way because they are not in charge. (It reminds me of hardline conservatives who see any foreign power as an enemy, even friendly ones.) Stormwatch’s plan to eventually “hack” power rings could make for some great tales down the line, if handled properly.
On the visual front, Miguel Sepulveda’s art looks great. Atrocitus finally looks creepy and menacing again, and I dig the textured look to his uniform. Man, did he beat the shit out of Stormwatch! The battle scenes looked nice and frantic, and the former WildStorm heavyweights didn’t stand a chance. My only nit with the art was that Rankorr looks a bit too much like Firestorm, with the glowing corona in place of his hair.
Sadly, art alone is not enough to carry a book. All of these plot hiccups prevent Red Lanterns from becoming a good series, but we’ll just keep on truckin’…
Not looking forward to picking this up. I hated the first part, and it seriously pisses me off to hear that Milligan throws Stormwatch under the best after only one issue of writing that book. Happy to drop it after #0.