Astro City: Family Album hardcover pg 82: The milk carton indicates that Astra's full name is Astra Nadia Furst-Zorus.
Astro City: Astra Special #1, page 1: The voiceover indicates that Astra's full name is Astra Jeannine Majestros-Furst.
I will merely note that the Astro City Who's Who page, as out-of-date as it is, does have the old full name. If one were looking for resources.
Posted by Greg at November 6, 2009 11:08 PM
Both names are actually correct -- to the extent that Rex has a last name at all. Astra's been through stuff that didn't make it into any comics (yet).
The Majestros/Zorus switch is easily explained -- when Rex was disowned/eliminated from the line of succession, Astra's last name changed to reflect her position as heir presumptive.
Her inheritance of her grandmother's staff also suggests that she's actually inherited -- Madame Majestrix is still missing. And that has some interesting implications of its own -- Astra's clearly not the sovereign, ruling Monstro City isn't even on her radar. So, presumably after the Majestrix's denouement, Monstro City became some sort of democracy, and Astra's title is of no more significance that a German princeling's.
The Nadia/Jeannine switch, though. That's interesting. It suggests we've learned something about Nadia's identity. And it's hard to believe that in twenty years of adventuring that the First Family never unraveled her disappearance.
Darn. My thought before reading Kurt's comment was that this might be a subtle setup for an Earth-1/Earth-2 style scenario.
Greg --
I'm not sure what you're building all that on, but most of it's contradicted in the issue itself.
Rex has not been disowned (and his last name, too, is given as "Majestros" on p. 1). Astra hasn't inherited her grandmother's staff (Madame M's is much bigger), nor has she inherited the throne (she's "placed in the line of succession" as "Majestros-third," which would be in line after Rex, who would presumably be Majestros-second at this point). Madame Majestrix isn't missing (Bertos gives Astra greetings and a message from her), Monstro City is not a democracy, and Astra's title of princess specifically comes with "powers and responsibilities."
And it's been a lot more than twenty years since Nadia vanished -- that bit was from 1961.
kdb
Spinning yarns without the book to hand, mostly. I had obviously forgotten the details of the encounter with the Monstro City eminent emissaries, and only remembered that the sceptre Astra's carrying around is specifically her "grandmother's power sceptre". A sceptre is usually a symbol of rule, so for it to come to Astra, what does that mean? Charles and William don't get to carry the royal sceptre, only Elizabeth. So I ran with that.
Plus, I could easily see a story (not long after Astra's first story, when Rex learned of the invasion of Monstro City) in which the refugees of Monstro City are brought home, Madame Majestrix is still missing, and Rex refuses to take the throne, leaving the Monstro Citizens to self-rule. Exporting American ideals to a hidden kingdom, that's a pretty familiar kind of comic story. "Majestros No More" the cover.
As for Nadia, right, I lost a generation! Foolish braino.
Still, the loss of a missing grandmother's name and the adoption of a name with no apparent provenance -- there could be a story there, and one of the easy stories is certainly secrets revealed relating to the disappearance.
Calling it her grandmother's power sceptre was a way of noting that it was a power sceptre that her grandmother gave her. It may even conceivably be the one her grandmother carried back when she was a princess, but it's not the one she carries today, which is an elaborate staff taller than she is.
As to why the royalty of Monstro City carry power sceptres -- it's Monstro City. The populace can be dangerous, to someone who can't smack them around easily.
I dunno. Bantering about Astro City minutiae is somehow less fun than I imagined it would be :-)
I'm enjoying the added insight. Thanks for dropping by, Kurt!
Oh, I'm enjoying it, too. I enjoy spitballing like I've been doing, and really I don't mind being shot down.
I will shoot you down like a dog!
A super-powered dog, mind you. In a cape.
kdb
Now, that is awesome. IIRC the Astra special had a letter asking about super-pet stories, and I, too, would like to see one, so I'm glad Kurt's thinking in that direction.
Where's the story going to be? Moore and Morrison have both touched on it (Radar in Supreme, Krypto in WHttMoT, We3) in various ways. You've got more anthropomorphic -- a dog that thinks like a dog but as well as a human (where you end up in behaviorist territory), or a dog who doesn't think like a dog at all and doesn't fit in in dog or human society (but you're almost at Loony Leo). You've got less anthropomorphic -- AstroDog goes on heat, or chases and catches cars; or the superpet is like a zoo animal that doesn't get enough enrichment and goes a little nutty.
Nah. Screw all that; I want Polynesia, from Doctor Dolittle. At the time of the first book, she remembers King Charles II hiding in a tree, putting her birth at least two hundred years before the book's setting. And she speaks a gazillion languages. She's the Brainiac 5 of the Super-Pets.
I'll say this. Alex is already complaining about the cover I'm going to make him do when I do the super-pet story I have in mind.
No schedule on it at the moment, but it'll come.
kdb
As long as you're taking requests, Kurt, I'd love to see the Astro City take on the Legion of Super-heroes.
(Don't even try to say you're not taking requests, because I know you totally are).
I'm fairly sure that Astro City time travel is more like Marvel's than DC's, and there isn't really ever a single 'future' stable enough for repeat visits, let along able to host a Legion. (No Time Beacon...)
I suppose you could have a legion-like team from space or another dimension or what-not, but you really lose the flavor that way...
Marvel has single "stable" futures -- witness the repeated visits to the Guardians of the Galaxy, the 2099 Universe, or Killraven. They finesse it with babble about Earth-616 and Earth-2457 and so on, but any time a writer wants to have his characters visit the time of the Guardians, they can.
None of which is to suggest that your larger point is untrue -- if Kurt wants to set up time travel in the Astro City-verse such that you can never return to the same future twice, then those are the rules. That was strongly suggested in the Samaritan story way back when, although I have no doubt that Kurt could figure out a way to have Samaritan-Boy consistently travel to the time of the Legion of Samaritans while remaining consistent with that Samaritan origin story.
(And yes, I know there was no Samaritan-Boy. That part was a joke).
As for the Legion being from space, or another dimension, or what have you -- part of what makes Astro City so much fun is that Kurt knows just how much to change established characters so they still have enough similarity to Superman or the FF or whatever to resonate, but are still different enough to be unique characters in their own right. I'm confident he could do so with the LSH, keeping the right amount of flavor while providing his own spin on the concept.
I will say that I enjoyed Alan Moore's take on the concept in Supreme, where Kid Supreme teamed up with teenage heroes from throughout time.
One thing I've always wondered, is what the world Samaritan was from was like (aside from his description) and why the Challenger disaster was so central to its situation (I have a theory on that, actually). Not that I think Mr. Busiek should address it, it's just one aspect of why I find the series so good, that I DO wonder.