Red Lanterns #15

Release Date: January 2, 2013
Cover Date: February 2013

Story: Peter Milligan
Art: Miguel Sepulveda
Cover: Miguel Sepulveda

Atrocitus undergoes some dream sequence or something on Ryut (it’s not clearly explained) and unearths a secret stash of Manhunters that he wishes to control. Meanwhile, the Red Lantern Central Power Battery still doesn’t work that well, and Ratchet has theories that the buried Inversions scoff at. In deep space, Dex-Starr kills a random space marine, and back on Earth, Bleez and Rankorr hunt down the latter’s brother. Eventually, they find Baxter, the man who killed Rankorr’s grandfather, and Bleez forces the human Red Lantern to deal with him. Finally, those reactivated Manhunters turn on Atrocitus, seemingly killing him.

Red Lanterns has been a crappy book from the get-go; the Red Lantern stepchild of the line, if you will. This issue was one of the worst of the bunch, as a majority of the book either made no sense, or was just plain stupid.

For starters, Atrocitus is not only angry, he’s also a moron. The Manhunters annihilated his planet and his race; why would he save any of them? And more importantly…how did he save them? He wasn’t even a Red Lantern yet, and even that is shown to be woefully ineffective! It was also silly that the Manhunters had skull faces for no reason. They were scary enough without looking like Terminator ripoffs; their fairly utilitarian design mixed with their horrible acts of genocide is what made them interesting.

The Dex-Starr scene was eye-rollingly bad. He killed that guard because he had a similar chin spike to the Midnighter?! Come on! (And I think Midnighter’s chin spike is stupid, too.) That whole sequence should’ve been left out.

The one thing that could’ve been interesting was Rankorr returning to Earth to mete out a bit of vengeance. Instead, it was boring as shit. I understand he’s still trying to balance his humanity with his burning Red Lantern rage, but it just didn’t work. Bleez’s shrilling didn’t help, either.

Yeah, Red Lanterns #15 didn’t have a single redeeming feature. I don’t know what the powers-that-be at DC Comics are holding over Peter Milligan’s head to make him write such dreck. This book needs to end sooner rather than later; let’s hope for a merciful cancellation during the upcoming “Wrath of the First Lantern” crossover.

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