I'll be interested to see to what extent they use Rand in the comics reboot, particularly as the second story is the Galileo 7. Obviously, there is nothing to stop making Mears NuRand either.
I very much doubt that. Any recurring character from the show, such as Rand, has the potential to be included in a movie sequel. And they won't know in advance what she'd look like, or how she'd end up being written and characterized in the final script. It's a long tradition of media tie-in comics to tiptoe around anything that could end up clashing with future screen installments; for instance, DC was required to avoid making Spock a regular crewmember in its
Trek comic after TSFS, and Marvel's
Star Wars comic was forbidden from having Luke confront Darth Vader or doing anything with the Luke/Leia relationship between films (just as well, as it turned out). And Bad Robot seems to be fairly activist about maintaining continuity between the Trek films and tie-ins. So I'd say it's very unlikely that they'd introduce Rand in the comics before she was cast in a future movie.
Indeed, maybe that's the very reason they've chosen "Where No Man" and "Galileo Seven" as stories to adapt -- because they revolve so heavily around one-time guest characters rather than the main cast, so they're stories that don't run much risk of conflicting with the film continuity.
