New Red Lanterns writer Charles Soule has taken time out of his busy promotional schedule (Strange Attractors in stores now!) to speak with Newsarama about the series. Read some highlights and view a preview below as Charles talks about “Bad people trying to do good things by doing bad things.” Also, spoilers below.

Charles gives a quick description of what Red Lanterns will be:

The tagline I like to use is, “Bad people trying to do good things by doing bad things.”

 

I want to write a book that feels like a comics version of a TV show like Sons of Anarchy or The Shield, where you have the antiheroes who are still trying to stick to some kind of moral compass. But it’s not all grim. There are a lot of moments of humor. You bring Guy Gardner onto the team and you’ve got to have some humor.

Soule gives the status quo post “Wrath of the First Lantern”

So where we start, everyone is suffering from almost, like, PTSD after that huge event.

 

The way that it’s going to work is that Hal Jordan, who has now become the leader of the Greens, doesn’t want to be blindsided again. He doesn’t want to have anything sneaking up on him that he’s not ready for.

 

He realizes that the Red Lanterns, even though they’ve helped the Greens out in the past, are kind of this wild card. You never know what they’re going to do next. They’re pretty scary. They’re very powerful.

So what Hal decides to do is essentially send Guy out almost as an undercover agent to them.

 

…To keep an eye on them, and to let [the Green Lanterns] know of any threats before they happen.

That’s the initial set-up for my run. And it’s cool because it lets you do a lot of things with Guy Gardner.

How does Guy Gardner feel about this mission?

Guy doesn’t particularly want to go over to the Red Lanterns. He’s doing it because Hal asked him to. And he’s like, why am I so.. you know, do I have so little value that I can just be sent away? And they’re supposed to be rebuilding.

So Guy’s a little bitter about it. No one really wants to get sent to Ysmault if they can help it.

Status quo of the Red Lanterns?

And at the same time, over on Ysmault, with Atrocitus and his Red Lanterns are reeling a little bit too, because they lost some folks in the First Lantern event.

 

They feel like they need to figure things out for themselves, because their role should not always be the Corps that comes to the rescue when the Green Lanterns get in some mess and need some heavy hitters to pull it out. And so they’re like, “We need to get our act a little bit too and define our role a little bit.

Soule on developing Red Lanterns individually including Rankorr:

I like him a lot, actually. I’m fond of him in part because he’s British, which I think is just a neat angle. He’s like a space John Constantine, in a way. And he has unique capabilities that the other Reds don’t have, and that’s always useful when you have an ensemble team that essentially have the same power set. Trying to figure out how to define them individually, it’s always good when you can find things they can do that the other ones don’t do.

So I like Rankorr a lot. He’s got some cool things to do. I’m not going to leave him by the wayside.

 

One of the things I really want to do with the entire group of Reds is develop them individually. There’s always room for character development with these guys. So I don’t just want to focus on Atrocitus and Guy. I mean, I want to make sure Zilius Zox gets his moments too, and Bleez and Ratchet and Skallox and all of them.

Charles Soule talks Bleez:

Bleez is a character I like a lot. She’s the only woman on the team with a bunch of not only guys, but, like, really aggressive, angry guys. And so she needs to stand out in a way that is going to have to be really, really specific and really interesting. I don’t want to spoil too much of what I’m planning to do with her. But I want to give her — like, I don’t think she particularly likes being pigeonholed or anything like that. And I do not want her to be, like, just the “sexy” Red Lantern. And I think that’s something that would be a mistake and I’m going to avoid at all costs.

 

So where I’m going to go with her — she basically could be somebody who is a real person, so to speak. Or at least a real blue person with bone wings, who has things to do and things she cares about, has goals she wants to achieve. Just like all of them. I mean, I don’t want to single her out over any of the other ones. I think she’s just as valuable as any other members of the team. I look forward to giving her lots of cool stuff to do.

Soule on Red Lanterns villains and upcoming lantern crossover:

The Red Lanterns’ main villain is really themselves, at least for the first arc. There are some smaller people that they fight. There’s one in particular that I just put together for the first couple issues after that crossover.

But there’s so much that goes on just bringing Guy into the team. I mean, that’s a huge conflict and a huge thing that the Reds have to deal with, getting him integrated.

 

And then the crossover hits, which is going to be really cool. I’ve had the privilege of seeing the materials for that ahead of time. And it’s really, really good. So I’m excited about that.

But then once the crossover is done, then we’ll see a villain that’s pretty cool. And it will go from there.

Soule on working with artist Alessandro Vitti:

Alessandro Vitti is really, really good. He’s an Italian artist who… I gave him some crazy stuff to draw in this first issue, and he’s just knocking everything out of the park. I had not worked with him before. I was familiar with his work from seeing samples. But you never really know how it’s going to be until your script pages start coming back turned into images. And man, it’s been phenomenal.

 

Now I’m upping the game on things that I’m writing for subsequent issues because I know that he can handle it.

You can see for yourself in the preview pages. It’s just really great art.