Green Lanterns Volume 1: Rage Planet

/ Alex Good

Green Lanterns Volume 1: Rage Planet

I have to imagine the creative team at DC sitting in a boardroom pitching ideas for the new arch-enemy of Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps. I guess they knew he was basically going to look like Thanos, but what was his name going to be? Then someone blurted out “Atrocitus!” and there were wide smiles all around. Atrocitus! That’s gold.

Atrocitus is the leader of the Red Lanterns, who are sort of like the dark side of the Force in the Star Wars universe, running on rage instead of willpower. And, like Thanos, The Big A actually has an argument to make about why being the heavies is important: without them there would be no balance of justice in the universe and everything would just be chaos. To that end he has decided to plant a “rage seed” at the centre of the Earth that will turn into some apocalyptic rage beast when it germinates. Or something like that. As part of the same “Red Dawn” operation he’s also going to infect humanity with a “rage virus” that turns people into violent zombies. If that sounds like the rage virus in 28 Days Later, well, I guess that’s where they got it from.

Opposing Atrocitus are Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, Earth’s two newest Green Lanterns. They’re newbies and they’ve got to learn to work together as a team because they’re forced to share the same lantern supply source. So taking on Atrocitus and the Red Lanterns is kind of a big first challenge, especially as the Justice League aren’t taking any calls.

I wish I could say I liked this more. The action art is good, and Atrocitus and his conflicted but sexy sidekick Bleez (spandex garters!?) make good villains. But I wish more had been made of the rage magma that they vomit out (another nod to 28 Days Later). If that’s the superpower of the Red Lanterns it doesn’t hold up well against the “constructs” of the Greens.

What really drags things down though is the amount of interior monologue, which is colour-coded but still hard to sort out and isn’t very interesting anyway. Jessica’s character arc is the main thing to follow, as she learns to overcome her fears and focus her willpower. This is something she takes a long time to do, and when she finally does get the hang of it it’s almost automatic.

I guess it’s OK. I liked Green Lantern when I was a kid, but this is part of the DC Universe Rebirth project and it’s a long way from what I grew up with. I thought the characters – heroes and villains – were more interesting and well-rounded than usual, but something about it left me feeling kind of cold. Maybe it was the whole “fighting to save the universe” thing getting played out again. It felt very MCU, complete with the Hell Tower functioning as a sort of portal that dragged in the usual army of mooks to do battle with. For a launch of some new heroes maybe they should have started out taking some baby steps.

Graphicalex

20 thoughts on “Green Lanterns Volume 1: Rage Planet”

  1. Aren’t there Yellow Lanterns too? I’m surprised DC hasn’t come out with the Rainbow Lantern Corp to “celebrate diversity’.

    I think comic book companies have a secret machine that churns out names. The worse the better 😀

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    • You are correct. The Yellow Lanterns are the Sinestro Corps. I don’t know anything about them. I think the original Green Lantern came out as gay a while back too so a Rainbow Alliance could be in the works. But the Reds and Yellows are both bad guys so I don’t think they can really get together.

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  2. The Green Lantern movies was one of the most pitiful things I’ve ever seen; the only reason I cn’t bring myself to stick the boot into it is because it would involve watching it again. But the name Sinsestro rings a bell, these guys sit around on cocktail bar stools with massive nappers? They were atrocicus all right, they made the Jedi council look like the dirty dozen. Utter rot.

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