Metropolis has Superman, Gotham has Batman, Fawcett City has Captain Marvel and family, Keystone City has the Flash, Coast City has Green Lantern - they’re all pretty well covered.
But you’ve got Star City which has Green Arrow, Amnesty Bay which has Aquaman, Ivy Town which has the Atom, Hub City which has the Question - there must be people in these cities who feel they’re being protected by the second tier of superheroes. (“They’ve got a guy with super-strength, super-speed, super-senses, who can fly. We’ve got a guy who shoots arrows really good.”) And that’s not even counting cities that don’t have any superheroes in residence.
Do you feel that cities in the DC world try to recruit superheroes from other cities? Post ads in the papers offering financial incentives to any superheroes willing to relocate and start fighting crime locally? Would up and coming superheroes have to provide references, describing their powers? Would some superheroes go mercenary and offer to work for whichever city offered them the best paycheck?
And what about supervillains? Or just plain regular criminals? Do they seek cities that don’t have a superhero on regular patrol?
Or does it work the other way? Look at Gotham. It has regular attacks by the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, Bane, Catwoman, Two Face, Poison Ivy, Ras Al Ghul, Deadshot, etc - it seems like being Batman’s hometown draws the crazies in. So maybe cities put pressure on superheroes to move away so they can enjoy a resulting drop in crime.
Obviously none of this applies to the Marvel universe, where all superheroes and supervillains live in New York City.
My feeling is that the number of supervillains targeting a city would be roughly proportional to the size of the city. As far as superheroes go, you wouldn’t need any more than the minimum number needed to protect the city in question (e.g. one powerful hero, or several weaker heroes).
Central City is an interesting case. It was the original home of the Fantastic Four in Marvel. In DC, it was home base for the Flash. And in Quality Comics, it’s home to the Spirit. Funny, they never bumped into each other.
I suspect it would be more the opposite, though there is such a huge variance in the DC universe between Elseworlds, multiple timelines, and quite a few multiverse reorganizations.
But for the average person, most supervillain (other than the world ending sort, but they’re a minority) activity has minimal impact on them. All the realms of high powered but still conventional crimes from vandalism, theft, fraud and the like are the worries of the various insurance companies. But if a superhero gets involved, there’s gonna be much more noticeable property damage. And due to the way the DC universe works, most of the time the damage is scaled to the power of the local superhero.
So if your local superhero is a Green Arrow type, most of the time, the damage is going to be small. If it’s a Superman type, expect people to be thrown through a skyscraper on a weekly basis, with MUCH larger disruptions.
Though I’m equally sure that some towns would indeed pay to host a powerful superhero, for the appearance, for the “exposure”, or hoping to cash in on the popularity and tourism. I bet though it’d end up like almost all modern cities who pay huge sums to host the Olympics - a huge expense and bother that may create limited boosts, but never recoups the outlay.
Most of the time that is.
But mass destruction villains, while the minority, aren’t exactly rare either. So it would pay to have at least one “major” hero on the block for any major city.
I guess it really depends on how “genre-savvy” the people of the DC universe would be allowed to be. Most of the time, the answer seems to be “not very”.
Exactly. The Marvel universe seems to work much the same way (though, as noted, Marvel has an overabundance of both heroes and villains, of varying power levels, all operating in the New York City area). Most of the time, a given superhero encounters supervillains of their relative power level.
If Mid-Tier DC City recruits a major superhero, to replace their mid-tier local superhero, they are going to start suffering attacks from major supervillains, because that’s a trope that drive most superhero comics.
It’s because Gotham’s biggest builder of warehouses in the early 20th Century refused to use levels or plumb lines. All those tilted buildings are worthless as places of commerce but they do make impressive lairs for villains.
In the pilot episode for the animated The Tick, superheroes were assigned cities by a committee.
But in DC universe, would villains even bother operating in, oh, say, Boise? “Hello! I’m taking over Sterling, Colorado! I have assumed control! Take me seriously!! Hello?? Is this thing on?”
I remember a one-panel cartoon in one of Marvel’s humor comics: “What If: the Marvel Super-Heroes moved to Denver, Colorado?”
It showed Captain America and Iron Man hanging out in a small suburban house. “What do you want to do today, Cap?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do today, Iron Man?”
Meanwhile, Cap is reading a newspaper with the headline “Super Villains Conquer New York,” with a sub-headline: “‘It was easy!’ says Dr. Doom.”
Of course, Spider-Man does spend most of his time going after muggers and the like, the sorts of criminals who really do affect ordinary people. That’s what’s Friendly Neighborhood about him.
Spidey is one of the group which gets referred to as Marvel’s “street-level” heroes: those who frequently are dealing with criminals and crimes which might otherwise be pursued/arrested by the conventional, non-superpowered police. That said, compared to most of the other street-level heroes (e.g., Daredevil, Luke Cage, Punisher, etc.), Spider-Man is substantially more powerful.
Now, see, I don’t buy that. Maybe Spidey and Daredevil won’t be laying the direct smackdown on Galactus, but they’d still find some way of helping (even if it was something the Avengers wouldn’t even notice).
Exactly. When Superman moved to Metropolis, Luthor moved to Metropolis. I just dug out my yellowed 1992 copy of The Death of Superman. Doomsday plowed halfway across the continent and wiped out the Justice League just so he could get to Metropolis for the FINAL BATTLE.
Lois Lane (at least in the Silver Age) came from some place called Pittsfield. Ever hear of a supervillain threatening Pittsfield?
After “Civil War” in the comics, the Avengers set up a “50-State Initiative” that assigned superheroes across the US. Before that, Chicago already had the Great Lakes Avengers with top tier heroes like Big Bertha, Flatman, and Squirrel Girl.
Back to another concern of the DC universe (lest we get stuck in Marvel-mode, though it happens there as well), two other concerns.
First, if you have an A-tier hero, you have to wait for the inevitable “dark” turn of the character, generally at least once a decade or so, where your protector will go mental due to tragedy, get converted via mind control, or otherwise loose their shit and then you’re at ground zero for an epic disaster. Not so much fun.
A second geographical issue - avoid the coasts. Given Aquaman’s on again, off again hate of humanity (Marvel fans, sub in Sub-Mariner, who’s even more of an anti-hero) you don’t want to have that unprotected ocean flank from which all sorts of crap can come aground. I mean, honestly, in comics, NOTHING good comes out of the ocean. You can’t (normally) avoid all the subterranean crap, or air crap, but you can avoid the ocean terrors!
Daredevil moved to San Francisco in the 70s (and I think recently for a short time during Mark Waid’s run?)
They’ve had two explanations over the years as to why LA didn’t have more super hero activity- The Shroud was a hero pretending to be the head of LA’s crime rings and kept everything quiet as to never bring much attention and then in The Runaways they established The Pride which was a collective of powered couples who controlled LA crime.
