DC New52 - Red Lanterns #0 (Atros Needs a Wing-Man)

If you're not a DC fan, just haven't been reading any Green Lantern comics lately, or if you abandoned all things Lantern after all that Brightest Day crap, you may not be aware that there's all these additional colors out there.  They're all based on core emotions from all beings and tied to ancient entities.  All of them have corps associated with them, and even though we never knew it, Star Sapphire is part of the emotional spectrum love and Sinestro using the yellow power of fear has formed the Sinestro Corps.  There's also the Orange spectrum of greed, which only has a single member: Larfleeze.  As well as the Indigo Tribe (compassion) and the Blue Lantern Corps using hope.  Finally, the "Blackest Night" crossover series showed that there is also a Black Lanterns fueled by death & a White Lanterns using life.

Which brings us to the color absent in the description above: Red.  Red is not just powered by anger, but is driven by pure rage.  So powerful is this emotion, that it renders the wielder of the red ring unable to speak, with liquid lava spewing forth from their mouths.

I really liked seeing red ring-slingers in action in the War of Light & some of their other appearances up to the New52 reboot.  I thought having such power would be difficult to maintain and properly guide, so many of their characters would be conflicted & I enjoyed how many of them obtained their rings.  Mostly tragedy and such, and rather than rising above it and using it (ala Batman), these guys take their power rings and let the rage envelop them.

When I saw they would be getting their own title, I was excited and after reading this zero issue, I'm really looking forward to continuing.  I don't really know how / if they're going to tackle 'the blood spewing forth and not able to communicate' thing... They may very well dust that under the rug & say they can talk just fine.  I dunno.  Furthermore, when a red ring is worn, you not supposed to be able to take it off (something about it taking the place of your heart or something - I forget).  These questions however, want to make me continue with this title.

In this Zero issue, we see Atros becoming Atrocitus after getting down and dirty with a really gnarly lookin demon from Sector 666.  Seriously... where does he put... how would he... you know?

Either those tentacles are a good thing, or a bad thing... Not completely sure yet... 

His visions basically show him that he'll be the leader of the Red Lantern Corps and we see him on a pile of bodies over top of the dead demons.  It's a good setup for someone that doesn't really know too much about this character and would like to find out more; someone like me.  I'm looking forward to continuing to explore what's presented within this title, as it seems the morality is left for the GL books, and maybe this one can explore some of the darker aspects of the emotional spectrum.  If it turns into a "We're evil, but we're going to be good." thing, I may have to abandon it.  I mean, hell, there's already like 4 other Green Lantern titles... Swatch swapping won't give me what I'm looking for here, but I'll hold off judgement until I read a few into this series....

"I don't know why I'm saying this rhyme, but I like it so much I'll probably chant it several more times in my book series."