Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #29: Dana Sterling, the Legendary Star-Lady
"Dana Sterling was born to former fighter pilot and NASA astronaut Maximilian "Max" Sterling and his wife Miriam, just a few years before the planet Earth was rocked by the cataclysmic event known as Second Impact. The Sterlings, following the global catastrophe, would find themselves moving into the experimental community of Macross City in the United States, designed to be a fortress-city akin to Tokyo-3 in Japan. Max and Miriya worked in the defense industry, as part of a project meant to revive interest in space travel and exploration, which had decreased around the world as the global community found itself preparing for the supposed coming of something just as dire as Second Impact. In her elementary school years, Dana's developing interest in sci-fi shows and a class field trip to a planetarium inspired her decision to follow in her father's footsteps and become an astronaut when she grew up.
When she was in middle school, the most unexpected event happened that further cemented her determination to become an astronaut. On what seemed like an unassuming evening, while out in the backyard of their home, Max and Miriam were unexpectedly abducted by a squad of alien warriors right in front of Dana's eyes. Agents of S.W.O.R.D. (the sister agency to the covert international peacekeeping organization S.H.I.E.L.D., specializing in extraterrestrial incursions), several minutes later, came on the scene (under the guise of FBI agents) to investigate the cause for the abduction, with a couple of them helping the shocked Dana. Dana would end up taken in by her godfather, an old friend of the Sterlings in Air Force general Rolf Emerson, who did his best to comfort her and raise her right. Aside from him, Dana was also helped by her childhood friend Bowie Grant, whose parents had been longtime friends of her own. Both encouraged her to follow her dream of going into space, and as she grew older, her dedicated studying and above-average intellect enabled her to advance through her high school, and from there the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Once she'd graduated, Emerson, who as it turned out was an Earth-bound asset of S.W.O.R.D., took her aside and revealed to her some of the key details the investigation of her parents' abduction yielded, along with the contents of a wall safe her mother had kept. These outlined that the woman Dana knew all her life as her mother was not of this Earth herself, as it turned out her real name was Miriya, and she was a former soldier of the Spartax Empire, an alien empire that was based in a star system located in the Greater Magellanic Cloud. S.W.O.R.D. had been working to locate the throneworld, and Emerson felt that Dana should be part of the efforts-hence, his using his connections to get her a spot as a cadet for S.W.O.R.D. Dana willingly accepted, and was soon trained to be a member of the space-based agency. As a newly-minted cadet, she was assigned as a crewmember on an space station located at the last known coordinates of Spartoi activity.
One day, during a routine maintenance inspection on the outside of the station, Dana spotted incoming ships headed their way. Just as she alerted some of her crew to the ships' approach, said ships, which belonged to the reptilian alien race known as the Badoon, attacked the station, its pilots intending to add the crew to their contingent of slaves. Dana would've been among them were it not for her line accidentally being severed in the course of the attack, sending her careening through space, the only personal possession still on her being a music player full of her favorite songs, some by artists such as Lin Minmei, George Sullivan, and the pioneering Yellow Dancer. Given the length of time left in her oxygen supply, Dana knew it was only a matter of time before her fate was pretty much sealed; she was proven wrong, however, when she was caught in a tractor beam and brought to the surface of a small planetoid with an oxygen-rich atmosphere. It was then that she met an alien humanoid named Rem, who brought her to the being he served: Ragnar, known as the Master of the Sun. Knowing of Dana's circumstances and her heritage, he offered her the opportunity to take up the role of an intergalactic 'police officer' of sorts, akin to those who made up the Nova Corps. Intrigued by his offer, Dana asked if there was a catch, to which the Master of the Sun stated that she would first have to prove herself worthy through a challenge of his own devising.
On accepting the challenge, Dana was escorted by Rem to an arena that had been prepared, and soon faced off with the Master of the Sun's illusory challenge: a fight against the Spartax soldiers who abducted her parents. Dana fought hard against the illusory foes, fueled by her anger over what the real ones did to her family, but when the moment came to deal the finishing blow to the leader of the squad, Dana, to her own surprise, showed mercy. Once the illusion vanished, the Master of the Sun congratulated her on achieving the goal of the challenge: proving herself worthy by not allowing herself to become fully consumed by revenge, something he determined would occur once the time came for her to take on the Spartax empire for real. The Master of the Sun then had Rem bring out the prize for Dana: a suit of hi-tech armor and a powerful weapon known as an 'element rifle', along with the master control unit for a sentient vessel named 'Ship'. With these, the Master of the Sun declared that Dana was now a champion for the spaceways, the 'Star-Lady'.
As Star-Lady, Dana traveled throughout the galaxy as a freelance peacekeeper, hired to help those who were defenseless against many types of alien marauders and space pirates, all while seeking out the location of the Spartax throneworld. Her travels made her realize that she was going to need more help than she realized, and she soon found herself joined by a number of misfits who felt they had no true home in the galaxy. These included Gamora, the estranged adoptive daughter of the 'Mad Titan' Thanos, and the so-called 'deadliest woman in the universe'; Drax the Destroyer, an alien golem housing the soul of a deceased Earthman named Arthur Douglas, created by the Eternal named Kronos, the grandfather of Thanos; Drax's still-human daughter Heather, alias Moondragon, adopted and raised by Kronos's son (and Thanos's father) Mentor, who with help from the monks of his homeworld trained her into a powerful psionic 'Renaissance woman' and martial artist; Rocket Raccoon, a genetically-augmented anthropomorphic animal and gunslinger; and Groot, a member of the 'Flora colossi' of Planet X, exiled from his homeworld after saving a human girl his fellow colossi had abducted, among other organisms across the galaxy. After going up against some of the worst the cosmos had to offer, and hailed as underdog champions by those they protected in the course of their travels, Dana and the others decided to stick together as a team, taking the name of the Guardians of the Galaxy. As a team, they semi-frequently found themselves crossing the paths of not only the Nova Corps, but also another intergalactic band of freebooters in the crew of space pirates known as the Starjammers, who were also led by an Earthling far from home in U.S. Air Force major Christopher Summers, alias 'Corsair'.
Dana and the Guardians, along with the Starjammers, would first encounter Earth's mightiest heroes, the Avengers (a team made up of certain women and teen girls either directly or peripherally involved with the since-disbanded U.N. special agency NERV), when that team was brought to a far sector of space by Aahno, a member of the alien race known as the Watchers, in order to prevent the ruthless space pirate Nebula from obtaining the power of the Infinity Union, a mysterious device owned by a cosmic being known as the Stranger. Dana used this opportunity (as did Corsair) to get caught up on the happenings of Earth while speaking with the Avengers, in particular Ms. Marvel (secretly former NERV scientist Hitomi Kaga), who was a part-time S.W.O.R.D. operative thanks to her connection to the alien Kree Empire.
Some time after Nebula's defeat, Dana finally received the location of the Spartax throneworld, and together with the Guardians and the Starjammers, headed to Spartax itself. While fighting their way to the central palace, they ended up encountering a squad led by none other than Miriya, who ever since hers and Max's abduction had been conscripted back into the empire's service as a battalion commander, due to Spartax's emperor, J'Son, keeping the two under house arrest...along with, to Dana's great surprise, their second daughter and her sister, Maia, who had also been pressed into service as a soldier for the empire. On being brought before Emperor J'Son, Dana challenged him to a one-on-one fight to the finish, with the prize being her family's freedom, terms which he accepted. As the two fought, Gamora and the Starjammer Hepzibah stealthily infiltrated the palace's electronic archive chambers. Per Dana and Corsair's plan, they collected certain data and beamed it to Ship; once Dana and Corsair's match wound up a draw, Ship immediately beamed the data in a broadcast across the whole planet, data which exposed J'Son as a heartless murderer. With the whole planet now turned against him, J'Son was forced to flee. Dana would reunite with her parents following this, and meet Maia for the first time, with her traveling with Dana and the Guardians so she could become better acquainted with her family's homeworld."
*Author's Note(s)*
For the Marvel half of this 'wave', I decided to do a twist on the usual role of Star-Lord in the cosmic corner of the universe, and immediately knew which anime character would fit the bill of 'space-hopping sharpshooter with a sense of humor and a love of old Earth music'. That character being, Dana Sterling from the 80s cult-favorite (and controversial) anime 'adaptation' known as Robotech, which saw the late, great Carl Macek mash together three different anime into one generations-spanning serialized sci-fi saga. One of the three series used would be Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross(with Dana having been originally its lead character, Jeanne Françaix), reworked as the middle portion of the Robotech story dubbed "The Masters Saga".
Speaking of, incorporating Peter Quill's love of his home planet's music into my take on Dana allowed me to throw a bone or two to the musical element of Robotech, embodied by the three musician characters mentioned in her bio. The 'Star-Lady' name has actually been used in the main Marvel comics, when Kitty Pryde of the X-Men, during a period where she worked with the Guardians of the Galaxy, used it while Peter Quill became emperor of Spartax for a time. I was also able to do a slight nod to Quill's discovery of a sibling on Spartax thanks to my usage of the second daughter of Max and Miriya (who here is portrayed as a member of the Spartax instead of the Zentraedi) in Maia Sterling, introduced in the 2006 film Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. Otherwise, my take on Dana incorporates a lot of the backstory of the original 1970s incarnation of Star-Lord, especially with her receiving her garb and weaponry from the Master of the Sun (who I picture would visually resemble Cabell, the Tirolian scientist from Robotech II: The Sentinels, hence the inclusion of a version of Rem from that same special).
For the visual side of things (seen in my DeviantArt gallery), I again turned to the talents of Inspector97, who did a fantastic job incorporating the color scheme of Star-Lord's 70s outfit onto Dana's battle armor, as well as channel the posing of the character as seen on John Byrne and Terry Austin's cover to the 1996 Star-Lord Megazine (which reprinted a few of the early Star-Lord stories, while also previewing the then-upcoming miniseries starring the character). All in all, it was totally worth it for such stellar results from Inspector97.