“What’s a ‘Green Lantern?'”
Now that the basic setup is out of the way writer Mike Johnson uses the second issue of Star Trek / Green Lantern: The Spectrum War to finish getting the power rings handed out to their recipients. The two cosmic franchises begin to intermingle a little bit more which leads to some entertaining and fun moments, particularly as Dr. McCoy, Uhura and Chekov get their first experiences with their power rings and General Chang creates his first construct to take on Hal Jordan and the Enterprise.
Johnson has done a pretty good job of integrating the Green Lantern lore into the Star Trek universe, although he has taken some liberties when it comes to how the rings work. An example being how easily everyone starts to master their rings, particularly Chang who creates a giant Klingon creature construct without breaking a sweat, or how Chekov is able to power the Enterprise with his blue ring. Johnson covers that a bit by having Hal’s inner monologue acknowledge that they seem to be quick learners. There are a couple of other things which I would normally question, but at the end of the day this series is a fun out of continuity romp and there are some concessions to be made in the name of making the story work.
The script takes some pauses in the action on the Enterprise to establish the final two ring bearers. I was delighted to see the red ring land on the finger of a Gorn as I’d anticipated in my review of the first issue. The orange ring lands not on Harry Mudd as I’d hoped, or even Cyrano Jones, but on the hand of Decius, the Romulan officer who, prior to Star Trek’s reboot, served on board the Romulan ship pitted against the Enterprise in the class Trek episode “Balance of Terror”. While the sequence on Romulus was only two pages in length I found it to be a little dry for my tastes and I don’t personally (yet) see why the ring would have chose him over two other characters who definitely have major greed streaks.
We still do not know who is the major threat behind the Spectrum War, in fact by the end of the issue we don’t really have a Spectrum Squabble yet, but the arrival of a pivotal character on the final page of this issue is definitely a catalyst for confrontation if there ever was one. And seeing him finding a potential comrade in Chang is something that could more certainly bring about a galactic confrontation. Especially with the possibility of Chang uniting with the Romulans and Gorns against the Federation.
Artistically Angel Hernandez continues the good work on the series although the characters appear a little bit off-model from what we saw previously but it’s still good despite a dip in quality. The coloring by Alejandro Sanchez was hit and miss in my opinion this issue, though. The colors were bright but lack the richness they should have when it comes to the various emotional energies, and there were panels where the violet of Uhura’s outfit was more reddish that it should be and Chang’s Muqtovor construct had too much orange for my tastes.
The Star Trek / Green Lantern crossover continues to be exactly what it should be – a fun cosmic romp that embraces the rich mythology of two of the best science fiction franchises ever. This second issue develops the potential for a major threat as three of the Federation’s greatest enemies find themselves equipped with the deadliest power rings in the emotional spectrum. Some art bumps in the road aside this is definitely worth picking up. Nine out of ten lanterns.
