Rage of the Red Lanterns

I've been trying to reconnect to my comic book nerdliness by reading the collected "Blackest Night" event.  It hasn't been easy, the local library has been rather erractic in what it has been giving me.   The first two collections pretty much left me cold.  The first was just a DC version of Marvel Zombies but with you know.. rings.  The second, was a disjointed rundown of all the new lanterns and besides pretty art didn't have anything I liked.

Now I got here "Rage of the Red Lanterns," and this more like it.  Not a collection of stories, this is pretty much the start of the whole thing and is a good exciting story.  It still doesn't make much sense, but it is certainly a step up. 

So what exactly is happening in Blackest Night?  Good question, even though this is the beginning of the saga there is loads of background stuff that has to be laid out first.  So, let's begin with Green Lantern.  He's Hal Jordan again.  For those you who weren't given the email, Hal wasn't the the Green Lantern for a while.  See, he went mad after his home town was super nuked so he became a villain and attacked everyone.  Then he sort became a hero again, and still attacked everyone but saved the day and died.  Then God decided to make him the new Spectre.  Then he came back to life.  Then it turned it that it wasn't his fault he became evil because he was possessed by the color yellow, so now he's the green lantern again and everything is fine.

Got all that?  (There'll be a test afterwards)

Now, also there's the enemy of Green Lantern Sinistro.  Sinistro (who looks like a purple David Niven with a big head), has be retcon into being an old friend and mentor of Hal who later went bad.  Well he went even badder learned how to really use the color yellow and made a whole bunch of yellow rings.  His yellow lanterns use the power of fear and are like super terrorists.  As our story opens the yellow lanterns have caused a lot of damage and death to the green lanterns but they have been scattered and Sinistro has been captured.

The damage has been done though, and it's great indeedy do.  See the Guardians have decided to change things up because of this whole Sinistro yellow wammy.  I hate the Guardians and you should to.  Blue midgets with big heads and a lot of godpower, they believe they know how to police the universe.  They are soooooo good at it that their first attemt, the android manhunters, went rogued and killed a whole section of the universe.  Good job.  They are so good at it, their huge amazonian women have left them to do stuff with purple light.  Now the few remaining Guardians, including one that has been scarred by anti matter EVVVILLLL, have decided to change the rules.  They have added ten new laws and have not told anyone what nine of the laws are.  The first law is it's ok to kill yellow lanterns.

Now what sort of knob thinks its a good idea to make new laws AND NOT TELL ANYONE WHAT THEY ARE???  How can you trust these hyper lawn gnomes?  Well, Sinistro's daughter (yeah comic books are one big soap opera) kills a yellow lantern who has surrendered and is put on trial.  The Guardians then pick some lanterns and say hey come with us we have a great honor to bestow on you, you get to be ultra laterns!  They don't say, "Oh we are going to hollow you out and make you cyborgs that would make the Borg cry."  Yeah, I would let these guys rule me.

So, they find her guilty strip her of her ring and send her packing.  They are also going to kill Sinistro publically and are transporting to the scene of one of his crimes for execution.  Hey, remember the RED lanterns of the title?  Yeah, here they come.  They are a bunch of folks who have been screwed over by Green and Yellow Lanterns so they took the logical step of putting on a ring that stops their heart and turns their blood to red burning plasma that spews out their mouths.  It fills them full of rage and generally gives them the IQ of Bizarro.  Oh and one of them looks like a kitty cat.  They attack the green lanterns who get burned and take Sinistro because by God if anyone is going to kill Sinistro it will be them!

So Hal is burning and wondering just what the hell is going on when the blue lanterns come.  Created by renegade guardians the blue lanterns say they were created to help the green lanterns.  The Lanterns are dubious but they need the help.  So everyone goes off to save Sinistro so they can kill him. 

Well on the Red Lantern planet they are torturing Sinistro who's like, "Oh you call THIS torture?"  Then they bring out their big surprise; Sinistro's daughter is now a red lantern and wants to pull off Daddy's skin and see if he can dance.  Well, by then the Green and Blue lanterns arrive and we have a FIGHT!  Then the Yellow Lanterns arrive, and things go completely pear shape.

Well by this time Sinistro is freed has his ring and kills his daughter.  This makes Hal very angry.  Oh oh, suddenly Hal has a red ring.  Things going really bad, so of course the blue lanterns decide the best thing is to make Hal wear a blue ring.  He now has more rings than any pimpin' mac daddy and he suffers.  As all this is going the one Guardian scarred by EVVVILLLLLL is now hatching his evil plan to create the black zombie lanterns. 

Whew, lots of plot to be sure.  At least I have a better grasp of what's happening.  It's still just too crazy and I liked it better when the lanterns were mono chromatic.  Oh well, that's progress I guess.  I can't wait for the Infrared Lanterns (just joking I hope.)