red_lanterns_23_cover_2013543782080I had stopped following Red Lanterns all that closely because, well, it wasn’t ever all that good.

I’m sure original writer Peter Milligan had some kind of message he wanted to convey about the destructive nature of hate, and a little something about violence toward women maybe, but I always felt like whatever he was trying to say was being gently masked by ugly monsters puking blood on each other while Bleez shook her ass at people while simultaneously denigrating them. And while I’m sure that description just lit up someone’s hidden and deeply shameful fetish buttons – you know who your are, pervert who found us by Googling “chemotherapy submissive S&M porn” – it really never did a lot for me, and I categorically deny that I’m just saying that as an excuse to click-whore for that lucrative chemotherapy submissive S&M porn dollar.

But I decided to give Red Lanterns #23, written by Charles Soule with art by Alessandro Vitti and Jim Calafiore, a try mostly based on this cover, which, after a couple of beers, seemed to me to depict Atrocitus losing a Declared Thumb War with some kind of energy demon, despite that demon’s obvious distraction from being skullfucked by Dexstarr.

(And before you ask, yes, I take my comics seriously. But after a week that brought us an event without an ending and a stack of comics so generally weak I felt the need to praise Scott Lobdell for writing a nearly actionless teenaged soap opera because it might be friendly to new readers, I think I might be suffering from a bit of disappointment hysteria).

So I cracked the book expecting more of the same weird action and musing about rage and tits… and make no mistake, some of that stuff is still here. But Soule has wrapped the whole thing up in a pretty believable and relatable tale about an undercover cop who’s in too deep and losing his moral compass fast.

Granted, it is a pretty believable and relatable tale that includes a talking cat, but what the hell.