The Story –
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Skorch’s appearance and quick death carry no dramatic weight and downplays the seriousness of the threat at hand |
While the state of the once tainted battery is a good bit of continuity, the arrival of the Third Army seems rather forced and too coincidental. While I found myself taken in with Taya’s story and found her end rather tragic, the somewhat hyped “a Red Lantern will die” proclamation falls very flat with the death of a character who appears here for the first time. The reader has no connection to Skorch so there is no loss when she is assimilated. I thought that Peter Tomasi was very brave in sacrificing Vandor to the Third Army, giving the reader a loss that carried some weight with it and illustrated the stakes of this new threat. Milligan would have been wiser in following suit and choosing either Zilius Zox, Skallox or Ratchet to die rather than a “red shirt”.
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This story calls for bolder choices in who to make the fodder for the Third Army |
I’m not sure who’s decision it was to reveal a potential weakness for the Third Army this early in the conflict, but unless it is a red herring it seems a bit premature to so us how easy it appears to be to take these beings out of action. I’m hoping it’s not as easy as poking their eyes out and when I read it I suddenly had an urge to see the Green Lanterns create Red Ryder BB Gun constructs to shoot the eyes out of the Third Army.
The Art –
I half wonder if the artists on the Green Lantern books have a running contest with each other to see who can make the Third Army the creepiest. Miguel Sepulveda does a great job not only with the unnerving appearance of the Third Army, but throughout the book he does an admirable job telling us what’s going on visually and capturing the visceral nature of the events in this issue. When you can ignore the word balloons and follow the story from cover to cover and know what’s going on it’s a sign of an artist who is on the top of his game. While I’m still not keen on Atrocitus’ lack of pointy teeth it’s truly the only critical thing I can say about this book from a visual standpoint.
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It seems a little early in the narrative to have the villains weakness revealed, but perhaps not all is as it seems |
What Do I Think?
Issue thirteen of Red Lanterns is a bit of a hit and miss for me. The initial story was very compelling but once the Red Lanterns showed up it lessened the issue for me, and it shouldn’t be that way when you like the parts of the book that don’t feature the titular characters. Writer Peter Milligan seems to get a lot right when he’s free to create things that are all his own, but struggles sometimes. Bolder decision making is needed when it comes to crafting a story that is as epic in scale as the “Rise of the Third Army” should be. The art carried this issue in my opinion, but how this issue fits into the larger narrative will be a greater indication of it than how I see it from my current perspective. Three out of five lanterns.
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