Star Trek is no stranger to crossovers with other universes –at least in the comics – and few have made as much sense at first blush as crossing over with DC’s Green Lantern.  Both are cosmic, space-faring stories, both featuring protagonists who keep law and order throughout the galaxy.  That the Star Trek at play here is the 2009 reboot film universe only makes the combination work better, given that it has a more swashbuckling, action-oriented nature.

At the end of the first issue, the Enterprise was in a standoff with a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, after locating a set of strange rings with an alien corpse on a rogue planet.  The rings – one from each of the colors of the emotional spectrum, save green – launched off to find new bearers.  Some came to rest with members of the crew of the Enterprise, while others found a worthy wielder in more dangerous places – like the yellow ring, which chose the Bird-of-Prey’s commander, Chang – in another universe, the eventual villain of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

This issue picks up there, with Hal Jordan narrowly rescuing the Enterprise from a power failure while dealing with the sudden outbreak of rings in the area.  Much of the issue deals with the other rings’ search for wearers, while glimpsing how they react.  Chang takes to his yellow ring quickly, for instance, as does Chekov to his blue power ring.  The issue still feels mostly like setup, with only limited plot development in the immediate – but it is still pretty cool to see a Klingon create a construct of an ancient predator from his homeworld to use against the Enterprise.

This series is, so far, the very essence of the kind of fun insanity that makes some of the most readable crossovers; the universes that are being combined have enough in common that the combination can make sense on the surface, and there is some fun to be had with the what-if of, “What if the Enterprise crew found power rings?”  With four more issues left in the miniseries, there’s definitely time to build on the new Lanterns experimenting with their abilities, as well as to build toward a suitable climax that brings Starfleet’s best and brightest to clash with some of the most powerful technology of another universe.  Right now, the strength of the series remains mostly in the possibilities, but for fans of both universes, it’s still an entertaining indulgence.