WHAT? THIS ISSUE DOESN'T SUCK!?
This issue starts off in kind of an awkward place. It appears to be still in the midst of Rise of the Third Army, when three issues ago in this crossover the entire Third Army was eradicated and absorbed by the First Lantern. Atrocitus seems way out of the loop for being a part of this story, he doesn't even encounter Volthoom until the end. And yet in other ways he's ahead of the game, where nobody else has any idea of anything, Atrocitus has already arrived at The Great Heart, which is clearly key to the entire lives of The Guardians, and very well might be the key to stopping Volthoom.
Miguel Sepulveda is back, after an awkward fill-in from Andres Guinaldo last issue, and he's really shining here. The massive space battle of lasers and sci-fi debris looks truly catastrophic. And Rankorr settling into his second skin is HORRIFYING in the best way.
Is Rankorr even going to have any part to play in Wrath of the First Lantern? Seventeen issues and he's still just barely beginning to adjust to his new status quo. I just think that developing his daily life kind of story is an interruption to the bigger story going on here. The end is happening, and Rankorr's barely at the beginning, trying to live a normal life. His story just doesn't fit in with the main event, it needs to be put aside until afterwards. Honestly it should've happened much earlier, and all the crappy meandering about and pointlessness of the first few issues should've not happened.
In Conclusion: 4/5
Honestly, this was the first truly good issue of Red Lanterns in a long time. I have so many problems with the way things got here, and the interruptions to the story, but I have to admit that these were probably the best Rankorr scenes we've seen in the entire series. And Atrocitus' stuff wasn't a bunch of confusing nonsense, he actually moved some major things along in the story. Took this series long enough.
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