Art By: J. Calafiore
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 24, 2014
A HAPPY LANTERN ENDING!!!!!!!! WOOOOO!!!
Okay it's Five Years From Now and we've seen Guy go from Green Lantern to a Red Lantern and a whole bunch of stuff in between that I'm not even sure is still canon, but here we are and as we see from the cover, Guy has gotten pretty blue in the future. That's a play on words son.... It's a joke. Foghorn aside, it seems that Guy has found some hope in the years we've missed and with it we all hope to see a happy ending for one of our Lantern heroes, because by my count it's 0 and 3 for happy so far, not including Sinestro because I haven't read that yet, but nonetheless it's time for some happy so let's dive into this issue and see Guy Gardner Five Years From Now.
Explain It!:
Our story begins with Bleez and Guy Gardner taking down a giant snake Red Lantern, the twist here is that Guy is a Blue Lantern and after he relieves the snake of his red ring, Bleez takes it and we see that she has red rings all over the bones of her former wings. You know the Bleez bone wings, stay with me here.
We find out that Ysmault has been transformed into a sanctuary for the lost souls of former Red Lanterns and that Bleez and Guy's full plan is to simply rid the universe of Reds. It stays pretty secretive on the reasons why in the beginning and it also stays secretive on how Guy Gardner is able to wield the blue light so well without a Green Lantern around. But he does and they are.......... What you want an explanation? Well sit back and I'll tell ya all about it.
Okay are you ready for this? Well it turns out that Rankorr is now evil and goes by the name of King Jack. He rules his area of the galaxy from a red construct Buckingham Palace and really goes all Brit in this issue. Constructs of dragons, those British soldiers with the fuzzy tall hats....... Yeah that's about all of them, but even with only three there's a theme there. We also see that Rankorr now being the last of the Red Lanterns has created chainmail out of red rings and Guy and Bleez have simply been collecting the rings of the converted Red's to gain more power for their final fight with Rankorr. Oh and the reason that Guy is so handy with the Blue Lantern ring is because he tried to pull a Kyle Rayner and over the past five years has tried out all the rings of the emotional spectrum and continues to wear them around his neck. It seems that the one spectrum that makes all the others work together is Hope, so Guy continued with his blue period.
So comes the battle and while it looks like Rankorr is still too strong for our two heroes to take, Guy Gardner simply flies up next to him and whispers some words to him and the rings fall off him reverting him back to normal. That's pretty fucking sweet, but don't celebrate yet, because like before Bleez takes on the escaping rings and now plans on killing Rankorr for betraying them at some point in the past.
Well Guy simply tells her what he told Rankorr. It seems that when you put on a blue ring it gives you a vision of the future and that's what gives you the hope to endure. In the future that Guy saw, there were no more reds and Rankorr and Bleez were both alive and well. With this knowledge all of Bleez's rage is lost and the rings fly off her and Guy simply disintegrates them. No more Reds. Man I hope the Blue Lanterns return soon in the normal timeline because man are they bad ass.
So in the end we see that our heroes have completed their task and erased the wielders of rage from the universe. Bleez and Rankorr revert back to their pre-Red Lantern state and appear like they're going to go off and make mad monkey love with each other as a way to celebrate and Guy will go on to spread hope throughout the universe. Now that's the happy ending I've been waiting for. Thank you Charles Soule, you've made this whole Lantern Futures End worthwhile in giving Guy a proper and happy future. Thank you.
That's it for Red Lanterns: Futures End and now all we have left is Sinestro and even though we see that a Lantern happy ending is possible, I have my doubts in Sinestro living happily ever after. See you next month as we jump back into Red Lanterns and GODHEAD and hopefully see you tomorrow when we look at Sinestro's Futures End.
Bits and Pieces:
I don't think anyone will ever know how happy I am that we actually got a decent future for one of our Lanterns. I really thought it was going to be a lost cause, but Charles Soule came through with a story full of hope, adventure and an optimistic future. Well done sir, well done. So go out and check out the ever emotional Guy Gardner and his fun romp Five Years From Now. Do it!
8.5/10
How can you say that this ending was great? This sucked big time, the direction given to the Red Lanterns by Charles Soule is a joke and pathetic, because, it was clear since the beginning that he wanted to destroy Atrocitus and the Red Lanterns or someone else told him to do it.
ReplyDeleteSince Peter Milligan left the sales dropped a lot.
Each week Red lanterns sells less and you are saying it is awesome. Give us a break. Atrocitus was turned into a joke.
How can the creator of the Red lanterns lose against Guy ? Guy wasn't even a Red lantern and Atrocitus is a powerful alien with thousands of years and he can use blood magic.
How can you say that erase the Red lanterns is a good thing? What is next? Let's erase Joker, Lex Luthor and all the Rogues, etc.
Before saying that a book is awesome check the sales. It sucked and the sales are clear about it. Nobody liked the pathetic direction given to the Red lanterns since Peter left, they should interact with the other corps to remain interesting like Jurgens said.
Ha ha, I'm not about to check the sales before I read a book and decide from that whether I enjoy a story or not. Futures End books were one shots that in all likely hood will be erased from the timeline. I liked this book because it was fun seeing Guy so completely different and it was great seeing a happy ending to a Futures End Lantern title. All the rest were downers. So I'm sorry you're book isn't doing what you want it to do, but it isn't hindering others from enjoying it.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you enjoyed the books, however, you missed the point.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't about me or what i like, but, about what the readers are saying through the sales. The book certainly isn't doing what the readers want to see, otherwise, the sales wouldn't drop drastically since Soule took over the Red Lanterns.
I liked a lot the work that Soule did in Superman Wonderwoman.
As i said, i don't know, if Soule was forced to take that route, but, i will tell you that Cullen is in my opinion the best writer out there at the moment and i loved what he did with Sinestro.
The direction given to Guy is quite counter-intuitive. Guy is a slugger and in my opinion, it is quite wrong to have have all the former green lanterns take over the other corps except Sinestro who created a new one. Having Guy beat someone like Atrocitus twice is like Sinestro losing against Arkillo. Actually, it is worse.
Humans have always been better at ring slinging than anyone else for some reason and Atrocitus underestimated him. With the sales numbers I took your advice and checked them out and Soule could be a big part of the decline, even though I enjoy his stories, but it seemed to me that the book was on a steady decline since it's beginning. With the obvious exception to special issues like Zero issue and the Green Lantern/Red Lantern flip book. Maybe it's more of a case of too many Lantern titles and not enough interest. I do have to agree with you on Cullen Bunn though, his Sinestro is freaking awesome and it might be my favorite Lantern title.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I didn't like about Charles Soule run is how little Red Lanterns there was about. There was about 340 plus before Chales Soule run and now currently 4. Freaking FOUR! But his writing was awesome and people could actually have fun with the book as the first trade was the only really good part of Milligans run. He humanised the characters so much and made Atrocitus a great villain. Rankorr is an awesome character same for Skallox, Zillius, Bleez and Atrocitus. Shame that all but two of the are alive now. Dammit Bunn. I still can't over his poor treatment of the Reds a big middle finger to Rankorr and all Lantern fans
ReplyDelete