IDW Publishing/DC Comics 2015
Written by Mike Johnson
Illustrated by Angel Hernandez
Coloured by Alejandro Sanchez
This is one of this year’s most anticipated limited series of the year for me and with this first issue it surely isn’t about to disappoint. This inter-company crossover featuring Star Trek has been a stroke of genius for IDW, they’ve successfully managed to work with other companies to create logical and stellar stories and this second team-up with DC, the Legion being the first, is proving to be just as delightful.
So we start off with Ganthet on the dead world of Mogo being chased by six rings of various colours. I would hazard a guess that the Black is what’s talking and taunting Ganthet and causes him to take drastic measures to escape, namely in a story like this to take Mogo and move it to a different dimension and for the sake of the story it’ll be the Star Trek universe.
The Starship Enterprise on its five year journey just happens to find an orphan planet, or rogue planet that was never trapped by the gravitational pull of a star. Seemingly long dead it has no atmosphere or indication of organic life. Something has been located on the surface scan but since it’s inconclusive they are sending an away team to investigate. What they find is one dead Guardian and six rings all of which they take back to the ship.
On board it appears that Jim’s discovered a new species, they’ve never seen an Oan after all, and Scotty is investigating the rings. What Scotty and his little friend do is well somehow activate the rings just as a Klingon Bird of Prey approaches led by General Chang who thinks it’s his duty to take down the esteemed and hated James Tiberius Kirk. But thanks to what Scotty’s doing the rings now fully activated cause a chain reaction throughout the ship including causing the shields to fail.
Four of the six rings have found local recipients, Yellow in Chang of Kronos, Light Blue in Pavel Chekov of Earth, Violet in Nyota Uhura and Indigo has chosen Leonard McCoy the other two we haven’t seen yet. Though there is one other here as well and that’s the Green Lantern that has saved the Enterprise asking why his friends skeleton is onboard.
This is the kind of stuff Mike does on a monthly basis with the regular IDW series and that’s craft these incredible stories with such characterization and promise that you get lost in it. That he’s got this understanding of these characters on such a level makes reading his work month in and out one of the more pleasant experiences. This issue is phenomenal it does everything it needs to do in setting up this six issue limited series laying the groundwork for a plausible explanation of how the two universes meet and the danger that comes from it.
Angel and Alejandro do some very detailed and exciting work on the interiors. They manage to really capture both universes quite well, keeping the crew of the Enterprise very much looking like their movie counterparts and Ganthet and Green Lantern like they should in the DC Universe.
This promises to be another triumphant endeavor for IDW and DC proving that in this day and age cross-company crossovers can be successful and something to embrace.