Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War #2 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Mike Johnson
Art By: Angel Hernandez, Alejandro Sanchez
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 12, 2015

Where No Ring Slinger Has Gone Before

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh man, let's get back into the Star Trek Universe because after that first issue, I can't wait.  the creators took the greatest of care to bring us the rebooted Star Trek characters and while some of us might have a problem with that series' second movie........ it's still Star Trek and at this point, we should all take what we can get.  In the previous issue, we saw the Guardian Ganthet escape the DCU at what I want to call some point in the future because all the Green Lanterns are apparently dead and the mysterious force that was behind it was now trying to finish the job by killing off the last Guardian.  I don't know how he did it......... I guess we'll talk chalk it up to Guardian powers, but Ganthet escaped his foe by coming to the Star Trek Universe and our crew of the USS Enterprise discovered the dead world of Mogo, Ganthet's long dead body and six rings of the emotional spectrum.  If being hailed by a pissed off Klingon that wants to see Captain Kirk brought to justice for insulting the Klingon Empire wasn't bad enough, Scotty had to go fucking with the rings and got them to turn back on.  So as our issue ended, the rings shot out to seek new bearers, but it's not all bad because it looks like Hal Jordan has arrived to give the Enterprise and it's crew all he's got.  Let's jump into this second issue and continue our five year mission, that's gotten stranger than anything we ever saw in Star Trek TOS........ well maybe not as strange as Space Lincoln....... Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with the rings seeking out their new recruits and it looks like Chekov has become a Blue  Lantern, Uhura a Star Sapphire, McCoy a Indigo Tribe member and of course because our crew can't catch a break, General Chang of the Klingon Empire is chosen by the Sinestro Corps.  Now I don't know if people from the Star Trek Universe or just people from the future of our timeline are just quicker learners or what because Chekov instantly begins using his blue ring to shield the ship and General Chang starts using the hell out of his fear to take down Hal Jordan..... So yeah, people from the present DCU are just dummies because I don't see new recruits rocking shields and constructs the way we're seeing them being done here.

While the fight goes on between our heroes and a ring slinging Klingon, we jump to see where the other rings flew off to and we head on over to the planet Gornar, where we see a Gorn named Glocon, who's become restless in waiting for his father to die and him becoming the head of the Gorn Hegemony...... Well, with great rage comes a red ring and after hearing Glocon's rants about how all he cares about is himself and his homeworld, I wouldn't want to be a Gorn right now.  Over on Romulus, we meet a Praetor named Decilus, who like Glocon seems to be obsessed with power, but where he and Glocon differ is how Decilus seems to covet exploration and making all worlds a part of the Romulan Empire before the Federation does...... now I don't think the Federation would do such a thing, but man does Decilus believe it.  So of course, the orange ring of avarice finds him and even though we don't see anymore from these characters in the book, they promise to be a problem down the road.

In the end, we jump back to our crew of the Enterprise, where they decide to retreat with Hal Jordan so they all can relax for a couple of minutes and figure out what the hell is going on.  It seems that Hal somehow followed Ganthet to this place even though it seemed like Ganthet came from a future where the Corps were destroyed and sadly that's all the information we get out of this book, but with the confusion from both sides about what a Starfleet is and what a Green Lantern is, the explanation isn't really needed at this point because we're just having so much fun.  As the issue closes though we see that shit has just gotten real when General Chang heads home to Kronos to put his new power to use by killing off the Klingon Council so that he may simply put his actions in play without having to wait for the bureaucracy of it all, but just when Chang believed he was finally in control, his dreams are dashed when Sinestro shows up and shows Chang just who the leader actually is.  

That's it for this issue of Star Trek/Green Lantern and I'm having such a great time with this series and I'm so happy that IDW and DC decided to play together to bring us both of these properties in one story.  While I'm not exactly sure yet how the timeline of events take place due to Ganthet being the sole survivor of the Corps at the beginning of the series to Hal Jordan and Sinestro showing up here, I'm not going to worry about it at this stage of the game because we have plenty of time for it to be explained......... just so long that it is eventually explained.  All the characters come off right and I love how we spent time dealing with Hal's inner monologue about what he feels when a ring from a different spectrum chooses a bearer as a way to really split the dynamic between these two properties because we're dealing with a lot of Star Trek here since the action is taking place in their Universe.  Fantastic art and colors all the way through and I can't wait to continue our adventure with the Spectrum War.

Bits and Pieces:

The action and the plot set up are perfectly distributed here as we see the players of the Spectrum War set up as Hal Jordan makes his presence known in the Star Trek Universe by taking on a Klingon Sinestro Corpsmen.  This is just the perfect merge of both of these worlds and the creators are blowing me away with the care they're taking in presenting both properties respectfully.  I love the art and I'm intrigued by the story and I can't wait to continue it. 

8.5/10