 COMICS |  | Home > COMICS > SHANE DAVIS' RED LANTERN SKETCHBOOK
|
SHANE DAVIS' RED LANTERN SKETCHBOOK | | 'Green Lantern' superstars Geoff Johns and Davis give a look inside their upcoming sci-fi opus | | | By Kevin Mahadeo | | Posted 9/19/2008 | |  | | | Fueled by rage and filled with hate, the Red Lanterns plan on painting the universe crimson with blood this fall. Thankfully, artist Shane Davis only needs a functional pencil to provide a glimpse into their upcoming mayhem—but we'd gladly sacrifice a few pints of blood for art this good.
| |  
Davis and writer Geoff Johns deliver quite the treat in October with Rage of the Red Lanterns, a one-shot issue leading into the "Red Lanterns" storyline ripping its way through DC Comics' Green Lantern from October to December. The issue focuses on the formation and expansion of the ferocious Red Lanterns, whose penchant for violence and destruction makes the Sinestro Corps look like the Peace Corps.
"You come up with these [Red Lantern designs] and you think about if it's actually a healthy outlet," laughs Davis. "Then you try to pitch it to someone and they just look at you for a moment. But then they smile at the end, so you know you did okay."
The one-shot also stands as the first team-up between long-standing DC writer Johns and the up-and-coming Davis.
"I love working with Shane," praises Johns. "He's got a really visceral, powerful penciling style to everything. You can see his style and his power; he makes these characters look very powerful and very badass."
Giving a taste of the power and badass-ery, Davis opened up his Red Lantern sketchbook for a peek inside at his stellar art, which colored us all kinds of excited!
| | 
ATROCITUS
As the head of the Red Lanterns, the aptly named Atrocitus forged his ring from the condensed blood of his fellow inversions—the demons on the prison planet Ysmault.
"With his top heaviness, he comes off as showing how the Red Lanterns are primal," explains Davis. "Their auras are a little more ravaged than the other Lanterns. It's more feeding off emotion and rage. With him, it's very top-heavy, primal, roaring in the air type thing so he always feels like the alpha male."
| | 
HAL JORDAN
While adapting to the space-based hero proved a little difficult at first, the high-flying Hal Jordan quickly became Davis' favorite character to draw, allowing for countless artistic elements for Davis to fiddle around with.
"I got so used to using capes as a motion tool," admits Davis, whose most recent work was on Superman/Batman. "When I draw different superheroes flying, I try to do something unique. With Hal, you have the energy tail, which in a lot of shots I'm trying to show it winding around to get an idea of him whipping about.
"When they launched Green Lantern: Rebirth, they did so many cool things with incorporating the symbols more. I started playing with it more as an energy effect than just a straight-up symbol, so there's some areas where I get to play with that in an interesting way. I can't really talk about it, though."
| | 
SINESTRO
The one-shot begins with the preparations for Sinestro's execution. The one-time leader of the Sinestro Corps seems to show no fear, however, as indicated by the slick smirk plastering his face.
"There's a lot of Sinestro [in the Rage of the Red Lanterns one-shot], so I was even more excited going in knowing I'll get to draw him a lot," enthuses Davis. "He's one of my favorite DC villains. Sinestro is just a cool character. He doesn't look like your stupid villain. You look at him and you know he's smart. He's the coy, smirking, smarter-than-you character."
| | 
VICE
Described by Johns as "the most brutal of all the Red Lanterns," Vice follows a simple philosophy: tear and destroy. "As soon as one Lantern is down, he goes to the next one," says Johns. This sadistic and vicious personality trait helped Davis come up with the character's unique design.
"We were thinking of weird ways to kill Green Lanterns," remembers Davis. "So, I thought, 'What if you separate the ring from the head?' So, this guy clamps on and rips people's heads off. The one [pincher on the bottom] is bone and doesn't move, so that would shove up through someone's chin, and the other would clamp down on the top of the skull."
| | 
THE SCARRED GUARDIAN
Although Johns calls the scarred female Oan a "character to watch," he kept the specifics of her role in the one-shot under close guard. As for the Guardians as a whole, their main goal focuses around prevention: specifically, preventing the prophesized War of Light.
"Yeah, [the Guardians have] little baby heads," laughs Davis. "They're actually really fun. I try to keep an 'infant's head' proportion. Meaning, the jawbone is short and undefined, and the cranium is much bigger. The body proportion to it gives an infant feel, which is kind of creepy—especially with the older ones who show wrinkles and stuff. It's cool and weird."
| | | |
Share this article
![[Slashdot]](http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico)
![[Digg]](http://digg.com/favicon.ico)
![[Reddit]](http://reddit.com/favicon.ico)
![[del.icio.us]](http://del.icio.us/favicon.ico)
![[Facebook]](http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
![[Technorati]](http://technorati.com/favicon.ico)
![[Google]](http://www.google.com/favicon.ico)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico)
|  |
 | |
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
|  |
| |
|
