[Comics] Star Trek/Green Lantern

Comic books are all about crazy crossovers at times because comic book fans tend to enjoy resolving the sort of lunch table questions we ask from time to time. "Who would win in a fight?" Then we pit character A against character B even though they're both accepted to be good guys because why not, right?

Star Trek/Green Lantern is the crossover ever that we didn't really hear an overwhelming clamor for and yet we still got it. The folks at IDW Publishing and DC Comics decided that this was a tie-up that needed to be explored.

As more or less a fan of both franchises, I wasn't quite sure where this was going to go. The introduction of additional colors in the emotional spectrum in recent years has made the Green Lantern side of the fence ridiculously colorful and has resulted in a mix of good and bad stories. How these characters would interact with the world of Star Trek would be anyone's guess.

But another comiXology sale allowed me to purchase the title, and thus the reason we're all gathered here today.

Synopis: Star Trek/Green Lantern is an 6-issue mini-series produced by IDW Publishing and DC Comics. The story was written by Mike Johnson with art by Angel Hernández.

The story begins with Guardian Ganthet being pursued by the Black Lantern forces of Nekron. He also has rings from the other color spectrums around him and before he can be captured he manages one last act to escape. We then move on to the 2009 movie Star Trek crew off to explore a rogue planet. There is no sign of life apart from the remains of an alien lifeform unknown to them - this turns out to be Ganthet. There's no helping the Guardian however they do retrieve the power rings and Chief Engineer Scotty manages to activate them. This eventually results in Hal Jordan finding the Enterprise and questioning Kirk and his crew as to why they have Ganthet's remains. At the same time, the rings manage to find replacement hosts among the crew of the Enterprise along with representatives of other alien races in this quadrant of space.

What I Liked: You don't expect a lot of story from a crossover event like this but they managed to put a decent enough narrative together by setting things somewhat further along in the DC timeline. Thus it sort of becomes a post-apocalyptic event for the Lanterns by the time they make the crossing to the parallel universe of the Star Trek Kelvin reality.

Plus we have Scotty getting to have all sorts of fun experimenting with power rings and eventually taking a stab and making rings of his own. They're not quite as warm and fuzzy as the emotionally-charged rings of the DC universe, but they'll do.

What Could Have Been Better: As is the case with such crossover events, character development totally goes out the window, which often feels lazy. If you did not watch the recent Star Trek movies or if you didn't get into the Green Lantern comics in recent years, then there would be little to no opportunity to understand the rings better. You don't even get to appreciate the fact that the opening scenes take place on a dead Mogo. And that's pretty tragic.

The ending was a little silly, but then things always get silly when it comes to defeating Nekron. Obviously Blackest Night was not my favorite comic book story arc. And needing to pretty much go through that story again in terms of how to defeat Nekron, well, that gets a little tiring.

TL;DR: Star Trek/ Green Lantern feels more like a Green Lantern story that just happened to take place on the Enterprise. There's little explanation as to why the ringbearers are chosen and they don't get to hold onto their rings long enough to really make a difference. But hey it's a crossover and we don't come here for the quality of the writing and so we end up with a rating of 3 Star Trek characters made to wield emotional power rings out of a possible 5.