Red Lanterns Annual #1 (DC)

writer: Charles Soule
artist: Miguel Sepulveda

via My Comic Shop

Recently I've really gotten to love Red Lanterns.  With Charles Soule, it's a series firing on all cylinders, as far as I can tell the best of the Green Lantern titles at the moment.  This particular issue, which as you might notice is also it's first annual, happens to be Part 3 of "Atrocities," otherwise known as Guy Gardner and Red Lanterns founder Atrocitus (you can find out his original significance in Green Lantern: Secret Origin), who has been undergoing a personal crisis since the start of the series.  He's finally back in fighting mode and wants to reclaim his rage-fueled corps from Gardner, who recently won jurisdiction of Earth from the Green Lanterns.

Under Gardner, it's no longer necessary to be angry all the time to be a Red Lantern.  The red ring has become a lot more rational and a lot more like a green ring.  Still, Red Lanterns are by definition damaged individuals.  Unlike, say, the Indigo Tribe, these guys have the chance to determine the course of their own future.

Anyway, as I said, Gardner and Atrocitus: mano-e-monstero.

Atrocitus attacks Earth in this issue.  It's a big giant crisis, too, with his cronies attacking key landmarks across the globe.  If Red Lanterns were at a level where it's beginning to belong, this might have been a whole crossover event.  Mass chaos.  Red rings find countless hosts, all of them adding to the disaster.  

Rankorr, the other human Red Lantern, is revealed to have been compromised by Atrocitus under artificial means.  He's another thread for long-time readers.

All told, it's a crucial issue.  I kind of assumed when I saw it that it was the end of the arc, but for some reason there's one more chapter to go.  I guess in this instance the series was given it's first annual as a bonus issue to help draw awareness to the arc.  That said, the issue certainly does its share of heavy lifting for "Atrocities."

Gardner comes across Supergirl, who has recently been a Red Lantern but was able to walk away, and she voluntarily joins the cause again.  It's a nice moment, just one of many that rewards readers who've already discovered the series.  Hopefully more readers will with material like this!