Red Lanterns #32

Man, I am falling further and further behind, but in my defense, I had an insanely busy weekend.  Nevertheless, I find that as usual, I must gush about Red Lanterns and Guy.

Gosh, this is a good book.  But things seem to be hitting the fan, and I find that I am fearful of what is going to be happening to some of my new favorite characters. 

So Guy and Atrocitus met up last issue, and each issued some threats, and the new Lantern Judge ended up joining Guy and his adorable bunch.  And they decide...finally...to go and rescue poor Rankorr, much to Bleez's relief. 

But something isn't quite right.  They find Rankorr, but he's not exactly the way that they left him, Atrocitus has him chained up in a hut, and has regressed him to a bestial state, which is rather depressing for his buddies.  Guy is feeling guilty, and Bleez is just outraged, and lets him loose, which may not be the smartest thing to do, since he naturally starts attacking them.

Meanwhile, Atrocitus and Dex-Starr and his new Reds have gone to Ysmault where they are less than impressed with all of those nice statues.  They wreck everything, and then Atrocitus destroys the blood lake, and presumably its magical powers.  He pothesized that Guy would bring Rankorr back and try to dunk him in the lake to get his wits back...but it looks as though that's not going to happen. 

Back with Rankorr, things aren't going very well, but Bleez tells Zox to hit the two of them with a 60% blast from their ship, and more or less sacrifices herself in order to subdue Rankorr.  So they grab what they came for and hi-tail it back to Ysmault...only to find the lake destroyed and their Battery as well.  All the statues are wrecked with the exception of Ratchet's.

This...is depressing for all of them.

Guy has Skallox and Zox trying to find ways to help Bleez and Rankorr, while the Judge is more or less just observing.  Then he takes Kara aside, and tells her that she needs to get the hell out of Dodge, that things are going downhill very rapidly, and he doesn't want anything to happen to her, telling her to go to Mogo and see Hal.  She wants to stay naturally, Kara is no quitter, and I get the impression she rather likes this ragtag bunch, but Guy is adamant.  I'm getting the feeling that he knows that they may not make it out of this fight with Atrocitus alive, and he wants to get the innocents out of the way.

Dang!

Things are looking very very serious.  I'm on the edge of my seat, because I really don't know how Guy is going to pull this off, or any of the Red Lanterns are going to walk away from this.  It is amazing how self-aware they have all become, working with Guy, they aren't just furious all of the time, they have developed other feelings and emotions and grown as people as well.  They aren't just cardboard characters anymore, and Charles Soule has been doing a lovely job of writing  this saga.

Just Fabulous.