Red Lanterns Milligan Interview

On Friday, CBR posted a brief interview with Peter Milligan in regards to the upcoming Red Lanterns series. Like many interviews on the popular industry news sites, this feels like a puff piece and gentle advertisement designed to slowly build hype for a series that won't be published for almost another half year.

Obviously, in a discussion about an upcoming book, Milligan isn't going to spell everything out, but I thought a couple of his statements were interesting. When asked if Atrocitus, the main character of the Red Lanterns series, is similar to any other character Milligan's ever written, he replied that Atrocitus shares some qualities with the Rhino, whom Milligan wrote in a particularly memorable Spider-Man's Tangled Web two-parter ("Flowers for Rhino") in the early 2000's. (I notice Milligan also said that the Rhino story was a one-shot.)

"Flowers for Rhino" was definitely a highlight of the entire run of Tangled Web (and that was, with the sole exception of the Daniel Way-penned issues, as good a run of Spider-Man comics as you can hope to read). It instills me with a bit more confidence and optimism to hear that Milligan still remembers that story and can sort of tap into that vein for this new DC series.

On the other hand, Milligan is kind of vague when it comes to how his new series will relate to the various going-ons in the Green Lantern universe (much less the DC Universe as a whole). He doesn't know all the specifics of everything yet, but it does sound like he's completely at the mercy of editorial whims and I wouldn't be surprised if he's forced to juggle around his story ideas in service to various crossovers and such.

Regardless, I'm still looking forward to seeing his take on the Green Lantern mythos. Even if I only have a general conception of what's been going on in that corner of the superhero universe for the past few years, I would still like to see what Milligan will do and how it will compare to his other works.

You can read the CBR interview for yourself here:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30432 

Milligan News Round-up

Earlier this month, DC announced that Peter Milligan would be writing a new ongoing series, The Red Lantern Corps, a spin-off of Geoff Johns' Green Lantern stuff. I find this interesting news because it's about the last thing I would expect from Milligan. The last spin-off he did for DC, the Infinity Inc. ongoing series which brachiated from 52, didn't seem to do so well. It was canceled after a year and didn't really have a smooth ending.


I always assumed he got the Infinity Inc. gig because of his friendship and mutual respect with Grant Morrison, but I shouldn't be surprised if Johns has respect for him as well.


I'm hopeful that this would increase Milligan's profile with the general superhero comics-buying masses, and maybe even lead to more work. The cynical part of me has a feeling that this series will get canceled before its prime, or that Milligan will have to appease so many ridiculous editorial mandates that he will lose before he even begins. My general feeling with DC's editorial lately is that they really don't know what they are doing, so I have no confidence in them. They are fortunate that Grant Morrison is writing so many of their Batman books because most of the rest of their DC Universe line is just unimaginative, middle-of-the-road stuff.


Just read the Joe Casey interview with The Comics Reporter that I pointed out last month for some evidence on how sour an effect DC's amateurish editorialship can have on a seasoned, talented creator.


Here's the link with a few comments from Milligan himself about the upcoming Red Lantern book:
http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/01/03/dcu-in-2011-peter-milligan-announces-red-lanterns/


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Moving on to Marvel, there's been some more news on March's upcoming 5 Ronin miniseries. I'm definitely far more interested and excited by this series than the DC news. For one, I have more confidence in Marvel letting their creators play around in their sandbox, particularly on out-of-continuity miniseries like this one. Second, it's going to be released weekly. (March has 5 Wednesdays.) Third, the artists lined up for the issues is pretty stellar by my standards.


Last week, CBR posted an interview with Milligan and I thought he did a good job of selling the miniseries. It sounds interesting and fun. The covers are rather attractive, too.


http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30334