Beautie

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© Juke Box Productions AstroFacts Personal Data
Status:	functioning android entity
Real Name:	not revealed
Debut:	Kurt Busiek's Astro City Vol. 1 #1
Origin:	Astro City Special:Beautie
Affiliation:	Honor Guard
Base of Operations:	Astro City
Range of Operations:	global, galactic, intergalactic and inter-dimensional.
Relatives:	Beautie thinks of her inventor, Elaine Girbachs, as her mother.
Appearances:	Kurt Busiek's Astro City Vol. 1 #1, 6 Wizard Presents: Kurt Busiek's Astro City Vol. 2 #1/2 Kurt Busiek's Astro City Vol. 2 #1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 19, 20 Astro City: Local Heroes #1 Astro City Special: Beautie Astro City: The Dark Age Book Three #2, 3, 4 Astro City: The Dark Age Book Four #3, 4

Beautie

A full sized doll brought to life. Her petite figure conceals a surprising strength and resiliency. The structure of her artificial body allows her to endure extreme environmental conditions, and provides immunity from the aphrodisiac allure of Goldenboy's pheremones.

"Hey,[we've got] super-people, aliens, monsters; what's so weird about a genuine living doll?" -- Robert Haney, of Goldwater Heights.

History

Beautie is a perfect life-size replica of the doll sold by Tip-Top Toys, based on the real-life fashion doll series Barbie. In imitation of her source material's popularized attitudes, she is preoccupied with all manner of clothing and accessories.

Beautie was built by a then 8-year-old Elaine Girbachs – daughter of criminal technologist "Dr. Gearbox" – to be a playmate, companion, and protector. Despite all of the intelligence and cleverness of this little girl, her father merely ridiculed and shunned her creation, evidently humiliated that such an advanced android had been built by his daughter single-handedly. Deeply hurt by her father's rejection of her technical accomplishment,Elaine ordered Beautie to leave and to forget about her, but Beautie's own heuristic design algorithms developed and resisted the command, repeatedly helping Beautie to reestablish memories back to her past and creator.

Beautie arrived in Astro City in the fall of 1969. Her first heroic act was foiling the kidnapping of Joanie Wheaton, the heir to the Wheaton Investments fortune. Six months later, she assisted Honor Guard in defeating the Toymaker, who'd attempted to copy her design to build a robotic toy army. The Honor Guard brought her into their ranks, leading to legal action declaring her a free person, using the Loony Leo v. Fago's Funny Features decision as precedent. As part of the case settlement, Beautie acts as the corporate symbol and representative for Tip-Top Toys, making appearances nationwide.

In 1978, she broke up an attack on the Astro City Gay Freedom March, which has led the gay community to adopt her as their favorite hero. She currently resides in an apartment located over a gay bar in Astro City. This results in isolation from male admirers with romantic notions, which is perfectly fine with her – she was not designed to be anatomically correct, plus her skin is rigid ferrostyrene on an omnitanium frame.

Over the course of her heroic career, she has been destroyed twice, once by the Living Nightmare, and once by The Silver Brain's sledgehamsters. Each time, she has been rebuilt.

She is a friend of The Tourist.