Is there really a place in the U.S. called Metropolis? And do the people there really worship Superman? A local comic book retailer told me of this mythical land, but I’ve never heard of it.
There really is a Metropolis. There’s a writeup on it at http://www.roadsideamerica.com . They don’t “worship” Superman, but they are trading on his name – and I don’t blame them. Apparently there was a plan for a Superman theme park there several years ago, but it never came off – to the chagrin of the Metropolitans.
Cal has the Indiana one referenced. There’s also one in Nevada – a “vanity” toponym according to the U.S. Postal Service. (Its primary designation is Wells, Nevada).
no.
As an Indiana resident, I can tell you that while there are plenty of super men here, there is no superman. Metropolis is in Illinois.
Metropolis Illinois is on I-24, just across the border from Paducah, Kentucky. The have a big ass Superman statue there, and just about every store there has a Superman something-or-other.
I consider myself an expert on the subject because I bought a tank of gas there once about five years ago.
D’oh!
I always get those “I” states mixed up.
Not to self: Remember, it’s Metroplis, Idaho…Metropolis, Idaho…
[tangent]Years ago, DC published a guide to their comic universe. It contained a map of the U.S. which showed the locations of the famous cities from their books.
Everyone always thought that both Metropolis and Gotham City were New York. Whoever drew the map wanted to leave all the RL cities alone, so NYC and Chicago and wherever were in their usual places. So they needed unused places for their two main cites.
Turns out, Gotham City is in New Jersey (which sort of makes sense, I suppose). Metropolis is in Delaware (yup, that’s what the map said).[/tangent]
That onfo turned up in some stories, too. Gotham City and Metropolis were across Delaware Bay from each other. They both would’ve really been in the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan region.
Places named Metropolis has one in Illinois and one in Louisiana.
Superman’s Metropolis is named after the movie.
Gotham City is just a variation on “New York,” which is nicknamed “Gotham.” Some of the earlist Batman comic books specificly named New York as the city he was in. And, of course, the TV series had Mayor Linseed and Governor Stonefellow. 
Shame on you, everyone! Nobody’s yet mentioned that, originally, at least, Metropolis was Cleveland. The two authors who first wrote about Superman were Clevelanders, and set the stories in the city with which they were most familiar. All of the names are changed, of course, but not much: For instance, Clark Kent’s newspaper is the DP (Daily Planet), as compared to the PD (Plain Dealer), Cleveland’s paper.
GNIS has the Metropolises (?Metropoli) in IL and LA. It also has a Metropolis View in DC.
There’s a Gotham in Wisconsin, as well as a place named Jane, MO that has an alternate name of Gotham.
Okay, I’m reading Evan Morris new “Word Detective” book and this popped up:
The use of {i]Gotham* as a synonym for New York City goes back quite a ways. Washington Irving, the creator of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” first used it to refer to New York in 1807. In his Salmagundi, a satirical journal, he depicted Gothamites as wiseacres and know-it-alls, a popular view of New Yorkers that hasn’t changed in the intervening years.
He chose the name after the real village of Gotham, near Nottingham because of a 13th Century legend about the place.
Gotham City and Metropolis are of course both based on New York City, but they’re based on different New Yorks, each one wrapped in a different aspect of the Big Apple.
The shorthand is that Gotham City is Downtown and Metropolis is Uptown. Gotham City is ancient, gothic, paranoid, full of street-level predators and prey.
Metropolis, on the other hand, is clean, bright, futuristic, with perils more subtle and less personal.
So to be more correct, Metropolis is like Uptown Manhattan - Harlem + Wall Street, while Gotham City is like Downtown Manhattan - Wall Street + Harlem (and both cities have a claim on Central Park at different times of day).
I don’t know enough about the city to figure the other boroughs into the equation.
Maybe there is a Metropolis in Indiana.
I forgot that I know someone whose house is on Lois Lane!
And the legend, at least from what I’ve read, is that the residents prevented the hated King John from visiting there. This was common enough – the kings toured their realm, while the citizens would likely have to provide for their visit. To keep King John away, the residents of Gotham all acted like complete idiots when he came into town. The king was thus sufficiently frightened at the thought that these fools would be providing for him, and proceeded on.
I wonder if this would have worked on Hillary Clinton?
Darn, I thought this was going to be about Fritz Lang.
By the way, the film really kicks ass when it’s played along with that Prodigy album.
I just discovered this message board and after lurking around for a few days I felt it my duty as a Torontonian to say: Metropolis is based (loosely) on Toronto.
Joe Shuster the co-creator was born in Toronto before moving to Cleveland and based his drawings on Metropolitan Toronto.
The Daily Planet was originally called the Daily Star and based on the Toronto Daily Star newspaper.
Here is a cached link on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.thestar.com/thestar/static/history/superman.html
There was a book that came out about 10 years ago that was basically “Everything that you wanted to know about the DC universe”. IIRC, they placed Metropolis in Connecticut. Gotham was in Mass., but I may have the states wrong. Bottom line, in the DC universe, Gotham and Metropolis were their own cities.