This was my holiday gift from Ming Doyle, artist on The Loneliest Astronauts and much, much more.

I got her the crummy 90s X-Men cartoon on DVD.

I won.

Born on Earth, Miranda comes from a wealthy background. However, underneath her opulent upbringing lies a woman who is calm, collected and driven to accomplish her mission, at any cost. She is quick to judge and values her assignments and goals over people. Miranda is also a powerful biotic as well as a tech specialist.

From the original Star Trek pitch document:

Never referred to as anything but “Number One”, this officer is female. Almost mysteriously female, in fact —- slim and dark in a Nile Valley way, age uncertain, one of those women who will always look the same between years twenty to fifty. An extraordinarily efficient officer, “Number One” enjoys playing it expressionless, cool -— is probably Robert April’s superior in detailed knowledge of the multiple equipment systems, departments and crew members aboard the vessel. When Captain April leaves the craft, “Number One” moves up to the acting commander.

From the Mass Effect Wiki entry (which is based on the game and licensed material):

Miranda [Lawson] was born in 2150. As she explains to Shepard, Miranda never had a mother, only a father who is extremely influential, wealthy, and ego-maniacal. Using a modified copy of his own genome, Miranda was genetically engineered to be a specimen of human perfection. Everything, from her intelligence, physical constitution, biotic abilities, to her appearance were designed before birth to be excellent

From Vulcan’s Glory, a licensed novel by Star Trek series writer D.C. Fontana:

In the four years she had served [Pike] as first officer, first on the old Yorktown and then on the new Enterprise, she had carried out her duties with a precision and perfection he had never seen in anyone else. In fact, perfect was exactly the adjective he applied to her at all times.

(And yes, I know, but I read it when I was 15 or so and it stuck in my head and it was cheap on the Kindle and hey, I occasionally read junk media tie-ins too.)

I also — and I can’t recall where, and I even went through several of the licensed comics along with DC’s Who’s Who In Star Trek — could swear that genetic engineering was added to Number One’s backstory at some point. It’s fascinating that these similarities seem so blatant to me, considering the efforts that the Mass Effect writing team have made to differentiate themselves from other franchises. Their physical appearance is, at least to me, very close and that’s particularly interesting as Miranda’s appearance is based on her voice actress, Yvonne Strahovski, who some of you might know from Chuck and Number One was, of course, played by Majel Barrett.

I’ll just shut up now. OK?

2.
A second printing of the first issue of Glenn Brunswick and Dan McDaid’s Jersey Gods is hitting stands this week. I’ve been promising them a letter of comment for some time but I am quite wary of doing this as I’m afraid it’d wind up being one of those unabashed “Oh my god like you guys are so good and Glenn’s script is super-witty and sweetly romantic while managing to capture the cosmic bigness of the gods in the story and that Dan McDaid, boy, he can draw real good and when are you guys going to start a fan club with a button set and a newsletter I’d be the first member” sort of things, but suffice it to say that if your local shop has a copy of #1 and #2 in stock on Wednesday, you’d find yourself a better human being if you deigned to spend money on these books. You’ll notice them by their fine covers by Mike Allred and Darwyn Cooke, two gentlemen that you may have heard of.

3.
I got the trade for Secret Invasion because I remembered liking bits and pieces of it in single issues while being put off by the way the series hung together as a periodical. I can’t help feeling that is comes off as being really sparse despite having quite a lot of talking and punching. I read the entire 8-issue series in about an hour and didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Am I alone in thinking that there’s no real depth to the work and that thematically, it’s pretty barren? Yeah, there’s plenty of rah-rah Marvel Fan Moments that I genuinely enjoyed (Maria Hill versus Jarvis on the Helicarrier in a sequence that should have been in one issue instead of spread across three, Nick Fury stone-cold shooting aliens in the face) but it left me cold in the end, feeling like a means to an end instead of a story in its own right.

That said, that Thunderbolts crossover trade was a lot of fun, mostly because I enjoy Norman Osborne vamping it up and being all arched eyebrows and hissed commands when he’s not in the public eye.

4.
Man, that new Star Trek trailer, huh? Sure is something, isn’t it?

I know that someone out there has a copy of this Starship thing in mp3. I require it.