Kurt Busiek's Astro City: The Annotations

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               KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY VOL. 2, #7
                        Eye Of The Storm
       collected as part of the CONFESSION trade paperback
                       Narrator: Altar Boy
                      Date: Late July 1997
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Cover:    The Enelsian warfleet converges upon the Earth.

1/1:      This issue follows on immediately from #6. A more precise
          date can be found by tracing backward from that given in
          #9.

3/5:      According to Kurt Busiek, vampires are thrice-damned
          "once for the sin that occasions the fall, once for the
          actual curse, and once for consummating it".

4/4:      Note the figure in the distance, to the right of the word
          balloon. This would appear to be the "Mr Bridwell" shape
          assumed by the Enelsian last seen in #5. This explains
          how the Enelsian forces became aware of the Confessor's
          true nature, as seen in #8.

5/2:      In the most popular vampire myths, vampires are unable to
          stand to be in the presence of the sun's rays; indeed, in
          many variations, such exposure is ultimately fatal.

6-7/1:    Samaritan, Beautie and Cleopatra are all capable of
          unaided space flight: unlike Quarrel and MPH (and,
          presumably, Black Rapier) none of them require breathing
          apparata. Note that this (and the subsequent two pages)
          are silent, reflecting the fact that sound does not carry
          in space.

11/2:     First mentions of Lonestar and the Colonial. Austin is
          the capital of Texas, whose nickname is "The Lone Star
          State". Melbourne is in Australia, formerly a major
          British colony; the hero's name itself is derived from
          "Wild Colonial Boy", an old Australian bush ballad.
          Earlier drafts had the Colonial named "Bushranger" (a
          rural outlaw or highwayman; Busiek had earlier used this
          name for a Spider-Man story) and "Ned Kelly" (named after
          Edward "Ned" Kelly (1855-1880), most famous of the
          Australian bushrangers). Both heroes' names were intended
          to imply their individuality and tendency to work out the
          standard legal system.

  /3:     The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, formed in
          1920 to defend constitutional rights.

  /4:     The Gottfredson Bridge refers to Floyd Gottfredson 
          (1907- ), an artist for Disney's MICKEY MOUSE comic
          strip. The Shuster Expressway is named for Joe Shuster
          (1914-1992), co-creator (with Jerry Siegel) of such DC
          characters as Superman, Slam Bradley and Dr Occult.
          Shuster was also the major Superman artist until 1947.

12/3-5:   The woman's mention of "bad times" in the 1970s likely
          has something to do with the death of the Silver Agent,
          who perished under as-yet-unexplained dark circumstances
          in 1973 (see #1, 6/1).

19/1:     The hero pictured here (speaking with the two police
          officers, bottom center) is the Cloak of Night; this is
          the first reference to him.

24/2:     Thromnobulax: "You see? They're falling for it
          completely. The fools, the unmitigated fools! We have
          them in the palms of our hands --"

          According to Kurt Busiek, Thromnobulax is a female; this
          is in accordance with the comment on Vol.1 #5, 10/1 that
          Enelsian females are the warriors of the race. Busiek
          also pointed out that Thromnobulax is "James Fry's
          default name for an alien conqueror type".

  /3:     Thromnobulax: "-- and we can crush them at will!"

          Second Alien: "Well done, Thromnobulak.  We shall rule
          first Astro City --"

  /4:     Second Alien: "-- and then their world!"

          Both: "Wlwlwlwl"

          "Wlwlwlwl" is of course the Enelsian version of
          "Hahahaha". According to Kurt Busiek, this came about
          because he'd originally intended to have a Greek font
          used for the alien word balloons. This meant that
          "HAHAHAHA" became "HAHAHAHA", so he modified it to
          "WLWLWLWL" so that it would look different in the Greek
          font. Letterer John Roshell, however, decided to develop
          a totally new typeface for the Enelsian captions, but did
          not change "WLWLWLWL" back to "HAHAHAHA" when he did so.
          Note that the only letters of the Enelsian alphabet not
          given in the text of this and the subsequent two issues
          are J, Q, and Z (though these are provided in the letter
          column for #11).



Release History:
Version 1.1 released  7th June 1998
Version 1.0 released 28th May 1998

Notes:
Citation format is page/panel. For instance, 18/1 refers to page
18, panel 1. Two-page spreads are treated as a single "page" for
the purpose of panel enumeration; for example, 6-7/3 refers to the
third panel on a spread covering pages 6 and 7. Issue number is
included if different from the issue being annotated, with issues
from Volume 1 specified as such.

KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY, its prominent characters and their
likenesses are trademarks of Juke Box Productions. All quoted text
is copyright Juke Box Productions.

Additions, corrections and comments should be sent to the editor.
Reproduction of these annotations, in whole or in part, without the
permission of the editor is forbidden.

Annotations for other issues of KURT BUSIEK'S ASTRO CITY may be
found at http://strindberg.ling.uu.se/~anders/KBAC/main.html
(HTMLized versions) and http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/kbac/ (text
versions).

Sources:
"Comic Art & Graffix Gallery Virtual Museum & Encyclopedia"
(http://www.comic-art.com/enter.htm)

"The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told", Biographies: Creating
The Greatest by Mark Waid, DC Comics (1990)

"Who's Who In Astro City" (http://www.bonner.rice.edu/morrow/kbac/
kbacww.html)

Contributors:
Shannon Patrick Sullivan, shannon@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (editor)
Kurt Busiek, kurtbusiek@aol.com
Mark Cannon, mcannon@dca.gov.au
Robert Carnegie, robertc@redjac.demon.co.uk
David Goldfarb, goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu
Derek Richman, drichman@kilstock.com