I was honestly dreading writing this review. The more I thought about it, the more I dove into reading other comics, facebook, or twitter. But every time I went back to Star Trek/Green Lantern #3, it gave me the courage to write this piece. It’s not good, that’s what I’m saying. Hal Jordan is finally aboard the Starship Enterprise and is explaining to the crew about the power rings, having a posing contest with cardboard cut-out images of Captain Kirk, and giving us the recap on Blackest Night and placing us right after that on the timeline (although his suit is post-New 52). Meanwhile in space, the evil side of the Crayola-verse have found their babysitters. The rage-fueled Gornarian is taught a lesson by Atrocitus, Larfleeze arrives to claims what’s his from the Romulan, and as we saw last issue in a whopping anti-climactic cliffhanger, Sinestro talks some more intergalactic politics with Emperor Chang of the Klingon.
This whole issue is basically a giant exposition dump for those who don’t know the Green Lantern mythos... and somehow are still picking up a Star Trek and Green Lantern crossover which is half way through its six issue story. Hal Jordan explaining how Ganthet could have crossed into the Star Trek universe, dragging along all kinds of friends and foes.
My problem was the art in the first issue, then the story in the second, now they’ve both leveled into lacking everything one could ask, but one could expect of in a crossover of this kind. The Star Trek cast continue to look like cardboard cutouts of the actors portrayed in the movies, the action sequences are stagnant, the dialogue is choppy when it tries to be conversational and heavy-handed when it gave me information about the Lantern world. I still don’t know where they’re taking the story with the Yellow, Red, and Orange Lanterns, so every time we see their interaction, it continues to feel like pointless moments that take me away from the main story and wastes valuable real estate in an already short page count (every issue has clocked in at 19 or 20 pages).
This is one of those crossovers that could have benefitted of those one-shot lead up issues to it. I would have enjoyed seeing a one-shot Green Lantern issue that threw us back in the middle of Blackest Night (again, my favorite and most metal DC event ever), and what exactly was happening to the crew of the USS Enterprise that put them in such a tight situation before encountering Hal Jordan.
Instead we get more set up, a forced banter between Jordan and Kirk, and a third issue that continues to lack in progression of the story, and makes me assume that things will be either left unexplained or be rushed in the next three issues given the big reveal at the end of #3. The thing that made me almost wonder about this issue were the main and variant covers which have been fairly solid throughout the run, and worth picking up if you ignore the fact that they are more interesting than the content inside them. I was almost excited for a second about seeing my favorite Green Lantern and DC resident asshole Guy Gardner tear into the patience of everyone in the Star Trek Universe, or Kilowog trying to figure out where all the poozers he was fighting went. None of that happened.
Score: 1/5
Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War #3 Writer: Mike Johnson Artist: Angel Hernandez Colorist: Alejandro Sanchez Publisher: DC/IDW Publishing Price: $3.99 Release Date: 9/9/15 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital