Red Lanterns: Futures End #1 (DC)

writer: Charles Soule
artist: J. Calafiore

via Comic Book Resources

Aside from the brilliant Grayson: Futures End, no other one-shot from the event last month, so far as I know, took the opportunity to explore the parent title's continuity as richly as Red Lanterns.

There was good reason.  Just as the new series Grayson saw a chance to help define a new series, the Red Lanterns effort was one of Charles Soule's final issues and therefore a way to flashforward to an ending that might otherwise never happen.  

When he debuted in the series, Soule brought Guy Gardner along with him, and he used this crucial element to transform Red Lanterns into a focused character study, with the rest of the established characters free to evolve the same way. The greatest beneficiary was Bleez, the demonic-looking lass originally introduced by Geoff Johns in Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns #1.  (The other way of describing her would be to take Farscape's Scorpius, make him female and add bone wings.)  It's fair to say that Soule helped make her into one of the most fleshed-out characters Johns has created.

Along with Gardner and Bleez there's Rankorr, the human introduced in Red Lanterns as an intended bridge character for readers who might otherwise have been dubious about the series when it originally launched.  It's fair to say that Soule vastly improved him, too.  Eventually an unwitting pawn of Atrocitus, the original star of the series (fans weren't never quite convinced by that one) until the events of the recent "Atrocities" arc finally concluded that arc, it's Rankorr who serves as the the third necessary character to conclude Gardner's journey.

Soule's work has transformed Guy Gardner from a frequently combative hothead to someone who has finally made peace with himself, and therefore been able to function profitably among others.  Anyone who knows the character's history would probably have never seen that coming.  This issue makes a compelling case for Gardner as a Blue Lantern.  He's been a Green Lantern, a Red Lantern, even had Sinestro's yellow ring (someone still has to revisit that in the new Johns context).  Who would've thought that the formerly rage-defined Red Lanterns would've put him on the path to inner peace?

Soule is joined by regular Red Lanterns artist J. Calafiore, another reason to accept this as part of regular series continuity regardless of how Futures End concludes.  Five years into a future that probably won't exist in that form by next year.  Not that you'll care after reading something like this.