Star Trek in the MC2

As you may know Sir Patrick Stewart portrayed Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation for seven seasons and four feature films before returning to the role with this year’s Star Trek: Picard series. I recently finished watching the first season and I wanted to do a little something that’s tangentially related, as always. So, let’s explore some references to Star Trek in the MC2!

 

You’ll notice quite a few of my posts recently have referenced the Ron Frenz interview on Adam Chapman’s podcast Comic Shenanigans Episode 744. The reason is pretty simple: it’s genuinely a great well of information about the MC2, especially the characters from the A-Next series on which the interview focuses. Now, here’s why I bring it up yet again: Edwin Jarvis is Patrick Stewart! When asked about his decision to depict the Avengers most loyal member of staff as slender in A-Next, Ron had this to say:

 

‘He gained weight for a while under Perez and everything but I was using as a model the John Buscema/Tom Palmer Jarvis. Which went into the Sal era; that’s kind of when I first started reading the Avengers. The book was being passed off at different points between Sal and John and they both had a more slender Jarvis and that’s what I ended up going with. Plus, we wanted to age him and everything. But I saw him as being someone who took great pride in his appearance, wearing a tuxedo as he does as a butler and now that he was chief of staff and everything else.  I always kind of pictured him, quite frankly, when I was on Thunderstrike and we had Jarvis appear a few times, I actually pictured Jarvis as being Patrick Stewart. I think a lot of people would be surprised that Jarvis could be that but that’s kind of who I pictured as Jarvis. The one I really remember it striking me as ‘wow, that’s kind of what I’m thinking in my head’ was when we did an issue of Thunderstrike where a character with electrical devices posed as Thor and was robbing banks and there was a scene there where Eric goes to the Avengers Mansion to go down to the lockers and Jarvis is walking into the locker and they’re having a conversation back and forth about Thor and all this kind of stuff. It was just during that scene; handling Jarvis in that scene that I went ‘I’m actually picturing Patrick Stewart in this whole thing’. Had Thunderstrike continued I would have loved to have explored Eric’s relationship with Jarvis a bit more. I tried…we tried to touch on it quite a bit in A-Next. I believe at one point Kevin is thinking that his father Eric always told him that there was one guy that you could always trust in Avengers Mansion. I was kind of retroactively touching on something that I would have loved to have explored with some of the other characters.’

 

 

It’s fairly easy to see the inspiration and I can just imagine Patrick Stewart’s voice when reading his dialogue. For comparison, here’s a picture of the MC2’s Edwin Jarvis as pencilled by Ron Frenz alongside an actual image of Sir Patrick Stewart:

 

 

There’s also a nice reference to Star Trek: The Original Series found in A-Next #10 when the new team of Avengers travel to a dark alternate reality under the rule of Victor Von Doom. At first believing they’ve arrived in a dystopian future, J2 is left bewildered by Mainframe’s scientific explanation.  Fortunately, Thunderstrike provides the young hero a relatable pop culture point of reference: ‘Juggie, think Classic Stark Trek – “Mirror, Mirror”!’ Even more amusing is the revelation immediately afterwards that Mainframe is not only familiar with Star Trek, but actually a self-described huge fan.

 

For those who don’t know, ‘Mirror, Mirror’ is the fourth episode of Star Trek: The Original Series’ second season. The plot of the episode involves the main cast of characters being swapped with their counterparts from a ‘mirror universe’ following a transporter malfunction. The Enterprise crew learn that their mirror universe counterparts are evil members of a conquering empire. Even if you’ve never seen the episode, you may know it through pop culture osmosis: The Mirror Universe’s Evil Spock sports a Van Dyke style beard or goatee which has since become a trope in various works of fiction to symbolize an evil counterpart. Shout out to Community’s Darkest Timeline! The concept of this Mirror Universe has been revisited several times within the Star Trek franchise, including 5 stories in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 2 episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and most recently during a story-line of Star Trek: Discovery.

 

I’m sure there are more Star Trek references to be found within the MC2, so please be sure to let know if you come across any!

 

Until I find myself in a universe where I fashion facial hair from felt until able to grow my own evil goatee, I remain

 

frogoat