History: Vance Astrovik was the only son
of a small-town butcher and his wife. In Earth-616
reality, the teenaged Vance Astrovik sed his ability to "push"
people with concussive force psychokinetically to fake having
superhuman strength. He also used his psychokinetic powers to
cushion the blows he received from superhumanly strong opponents
in the ring. A private detective hired by Vance's mother found
him. Vance's Mother, Norma Astrovik, told Vance that his father
was undergoing psychiatric therapy and seemed to be changing
for the better. Vance returned home with his mother.
In the other, divergent timeline, Atrovik went
into Air Force at the age of eighteen. Astrovik (who legally
changed his name to Astro when he was twenty-one) became the
youngest man to be accepted into the astronaut-training program
several years later.
Astro volunteered for the first manned interstellar
mission ever conducted by the United States government. In this
alternate future Reed Richards never released his own experimental
starship to the government. Astro's ship, Odysseus I, was not
equipped with the capacity for travel through hyperspace at
faster-than-light speed. Hence, the journey to Earth's nearest
interstellar neighbor, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system,
would take about ten centuries. To protect him from aging, Astro
was covered with a skin-preserving copper alloy bodysuit and
his blood was infused with an unknown preservative fluid. Astro
was then launched into space.
While on his way to Alpha Centauri, the starship
automatically awoke him from suspended animation at times in
order for him to perform course adjustments. His periods of
wakefulness lasted up to a year. On several occasions when he
was awake, Astro eventually went mad, only to return to a semblance
of normality after the ship automatically put him under suspended
animation again. During his long periods of sustained dreamtime
activities, Astro's psychokinetic powers emerged. By the time
he emerged on Centauri IV almost a thousand years after his
journey began, he had virtually full control over his psychokinetic
abilities.
Upon arrival Astro learned that Earth had beaten
him to Centauri IV by two hundred years, having developed warp-drive
starships since the time he had left. Earth had been unable
to intercept his flight. The Centaurian colony afforded him
a hero's welcome.
Astro was determined to carry out the mission
he was assigned a millennium ago even though it would be superfluous.
While engaged in his geophysical survey, he met Yondu Udonta,
one of the humanoid natives of the planet.
When the alien Badoon launched an attack on Centauri
IV, annihilating the human colony and methodically eradicating
the natives, Astro and Yondu attempted to escape in Yondu's
starship. They were overtaken by the Badoon and transported
to Earth. There they escaped and joined with other survivors
of the Badoon's attack on Earth and its planetary colonies to
form the Guardians of the Galaxy, a team dedicated to freeing
Earth and its colonies from Badoon domination.
After Earth was finally liberated, in no small
part due to the Guardians' own efforts, the Guardians began
travel through the Milky Way Galaxy in the hopes of safeguarding
freedom wherever they went. The Guardians have traveled to Twentieth
Century Earth, but have returned to their own time period.
