Okay, In Batman, the title character lives in Gotham, which is like a creepier version of NYC. In Superman, the title character lives in Metropolis, which again, is much like NYC(in the movies, Metropolis seems to have it’s own statue of liberty).
Interestingly enough, in Spiderman, Spidey lives in New York, not some parallel with an adjective for a name. I believe X-men also has the team visiting New York at least in the first movie.
Is this a Marvel vs. DC thing, were DC is loathe to use the Real New York but Marvel doesn’t care? Or an indiviual comic thing? And is New York the only city affected by this? I seem to recall that in one of the superman movies, there was a bomb in a Parisian Elevator on the Effiel tower.
I’m really rusty on my comic books, with superman the only real experience I have(because my dad is a Superman fan and has a lot of the comics). Most of my knowledge is from TV and the movies, but I don’t know how closely those follow the comics.
The heroes of the DC universe (and other comics verses) each had their own fictional city, pretty much to themselves until they started teaming up. This had been the standard for 20 odd years when Marvel, essentially starting from scratch in 1963, set their adventures in NYC, one of many more realistic touches which made Marvel adventures innovative. The Fantastic Four, the first 1963 Marvel Universe title, was initially set in Central City, California, but was quickly moved to NYC and most other new Marvel titles were set there as well. DC kept their fake cities but gradually began to have adventures in real ones as well.
To anticipate the nitpicks, I know that Timley-Atlas-Marvel published superheroes back in the 40s, but I don’t recall whether they were set in real cities. Even if 1963 Marvel was not the first to set adventures in the “real” world, it was an innovation in that it was contrary to the prevaling standard, i.e. DC Comics.
Wikipedia neatly sums up the Metropolis/Gotham geography:
You think that’s bad…according to some comics and movies (albeit the crappy movies), Gotham has it’s own Statue of Liberty analog, too. (Though I’ve seen it carrying a shield and a sword.)
That is not the Statue of Liberty. Gotham has a “sister statue” to the New York icon; the Statue of Justice. I think it was first described in Franz Kafka’s novel Amerika.
Gamaliel:
I remember clearly Prince Namor throwing the Staten Island Ferry across New York harbor back in the '40s. I believe that you could find a reprinting of the story in Jules Feiffer’s old Comic Book Heroes work. The Timely heroes worked in real cities, although I can recall a number of fictional countries.
As stated, Marvel went for being “realistic” by having real people having adventures in real places. I presume that DC did this to heighten the fantasy aspect of their comics as well as not having the characters meet on a regular basis, saving them headaches on figuring out what to do when they did meet. Of course, fans wanted to see the heroes meet, so there they went…
Actually, in Batman’s earliest adventures, he was based in New York City. The locale was moved to Gotham City (which, of course, was still New York: Gotham was a nickname for NYC) after a few issues.
The answer to this is complex, and has to do with changing times and changing tastes.
DC heroes started out in the 1930s & 40s (some revived in the 50s, but under the same principles). Back then, you didn’t want to name a locale. Since the stories were fiction, tying them to a specific city would lead audiences to a different expectation. People would not like the supervillain destroying actual buildings.
In addition, the comic industry was centered in New York, but they wanted to appeal to readers who weren’t in New York. If NYC were used, someone in Chicago might wonder why his city was slighted. Better to pick a mythical city, so everyone could imagine it was their own.
By the 60s, readers didn’t care that the action was in NYC (a fact that Marvel discovered). Since the conventional wisdom in the previous paragraph was wrong, it was convenient for Marvel to set most of its stories in NYC, allowing more crossovers. There was nothing odd about Daredevil showing up in a Spider-Man comic, since they were both working in the same city. In DC, though, if you wanted Flash to meet up with Superman, you’d need some excuse to get them together.
As far as added realism is concerned – we’re talking about people with abilities that weren’t even close to being realistic. It was hardly a concern.
Not true. The flashy powers were a given, but what Marvel changed was the characterization and setting. Instead of charmed golden boys in Keystone City, they had squabbling, angry, angsty heroes with money and relationship problems roaming the dirty NYC streets. That realism made a big difference both in the stories and the popularity of Marvels. The 1963 Marvels weren’t popular because they were just more adventures of more heroes with more powers, they were popular because of these differences.
Marvel has also had the West Coast Avengers in LA.
Also in California in the past was the first Spider-Woman who at points in her career was in San Francisco and LA.
The second Spider-Woman was in Colorado.
The Great Lakes Avengers was out of Wisconsin as I remember.
There was a group out of Texas that covered the Southwestern US which included Firebird, Shooting Star, Texas Twister, and others who I am not remembering at this moment.
The X-Mansion is in Westchester.
As far as DC is concerned, Star City was Seattle, Coast City was either LA or SF(not remembering which), and Central City was in Kansas and Keystone City was in Missouri(paralleling the two Kansas Cities).
I had always read that Metropolis was Chicago, Smallville was in Kansas, asnd Gotham was NYC. Happy Harbor was in Rhode Island, IIRC.