Talking with CBR, the new writer for Red Lanterns, Charles Soule is now setting his sights on perfection. I happen to think HBO’s tv series “The Wire” is the best drama ever. So its quite intriguing when a comic book series about anger filled napalm blood spilling creatures gets compared to it. If there was no reason to pick up Red Lanterns on June 26th, there sure the hell is now. Read below for some quotes on that and more.

 

Soule on what sets the Red Lanterns apart from other corps:

It goes back to the comparison I made earlier, with shows like “The Shield” and “Sons Of Anarchy” and “The Wire” — shows that take a realistic approach to what it’s like to be someone who is not seen as a good guy. Society doesn’t see you as a useful element, so you’ve got to decide who you want to be, yourself. Even if you want to be part of society, if they don’t want you do you even care? Do you have to be part of it? I think those are really interesting questions that you can’t necessarily do the same way in some other book. It would tough to see, say, Captain America, not to disparage another guy’s title, but it would be a little harder to see him wrestling with some of those questions. So having a book where you can have Guy Gardner really feel like he’s been, not exactly rejected by the Greens, but thinking, “Why do they send me to be part of this horrible Red Lantern Corps when they could have sent anybody? Why did they stick me with this terrible gig?” There’s a lot of emotions you don’t get to play with in the other titles!

Soule on working with Alessandro Vitti:

I’ll tell you, one of the great joys of working at DC is seeing the people they have drawing their things. It’s unbelievable, and Alessandro is absolutely no exception. You write a scene and go, “How could that ever be realized?” and he handles it more perfectly than you ever could envision in your head.

 

I had him do a lot of weird stuff in this first issue, as you can see in the preview pages. You’ve got Atrocitus mangling a weird pig/deer Red Lantern hybrid and then you cut to Guy and Hal in what appears to be Guy’s garage working on a motorcycle. The tone and the settings are all over the place, but he’s just done an amazing job with it. I had the pleasure of meeting him at C2E2 about a month or so ago. He was super great and super tall and super skinny! [Laughs] He was very nice and I enjoyed talking to him. I look forward to working with him for a long time to come.

Soule on long term plans for the series:

I’m writing this the way I write all these ongoing series, which is that I have a fairly tight plan for this arc I’m working on, I have a looser plan for the arc that’s after that and after that, I have ideas. I have plot points that I’m building toward, but I wouldn’t say I have outlines for forty issues or anything like that. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the ideas as I write; this is pretty fertile ground, so I’m sure some good stuff is going to show up.

I think the last two or three pages of my first issue are really going to lay the ground for what I want to do, and I think people are going to be surprised. It’s going to be fun to get those reactions and see what the Internet has to say! [Laughs]