Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Geography of DC Comics: Gotham City
When trying to think up names for Sim City 4 cities or fantasy football team names or for any of many others reasons why someone like me might want to make up place names, Gotham has always been a thorn in my side. No matter how hard I try, I cannot think of a name as good as Gotham. Part of that is probably because it is so ingrained in pop culture and my mind that it actually feels like a real place and actual names always seem more realistic than fake ones. Moreover, the fact that Gotham is actually a nickname for New York probably gives some added weight to it.
Still, the name is simply perfect. It is short and catchy, yet manages to evoke so many images. Goth elicits memories of barbarian tribes, towering Gothic cathedrals and darkness, while ham is a simple English town ending. Thus, it manages to be a reference, but still sound like a real place.
But because Gotham is not a honest-to-goodness physical place, the most important part of its reality is in the mind. Gotham is darkness, it is madness, an art-deco nightmare. It is shadow, towering skyscrapers and muggings on street corners. When you think of Gotham City it brings to mind images of a real place, just as if you thought of New York, London or Hong Kong.
I haven't been able to find quite as much information the geography of the city itself, but I did find some interesting things. Strange Maps, which actually began this endeavor, has a post with some information on various places in the city, as does Gotham and Beyond. I'm not well versed enough with comics to comment further on those particulars, so let's just get to the maps.
The first image comes from Batman: The Animated Series, and honestly isn't all that helpful. Though it's a nice sepia tone and I just like the way it looks.
This next map is the original from Strange Maps and wonderful for city details, but not great for larger area names. As far as I can tell Gotham City is comprised of three main islands, two secondary islands and a few other islands here or there (including Blackgate Isle, #41 on the map). The islands I consider secondary are the two triangular ones, the northern containing Arkham Asylum, the southern the Tricorner Yards. These seem very integrated into the city and important, with an expressway going through the northern and the shipyards on the southern. The other islands are not given much detail, only showing a few bridges connecting them to the main islands and one road.
Here is a subway map of Gotham, which gives some nice detail on neighborhood names. It also gives us the areas of Uptown, Midtown and Downtown (obviously modeled after NYC), but no names for the actual islands which these areas of the city are on. A non-subway map similar to this can be found here. It has a zoom function, lists all sorts of street names and is without a doubt the best map of the city I have found. Oddly, both of these maps get rid of four of the five islands in the south of the city.
From these maps we get the following neighborhoods.
Uptown: Granton, Farrow, Harrow, Jerold.
Midtown: Gainsly, Reatton.
Downtown: Haysville, Stevensburgh, West Harlow.
Additionally, there is the Narrows between Midtown and Downtown, and the island in the southwest corner is South Hinkley.
I would appreciate any input those readers with more comic book knowledge than me have.
Still, the name is simply perfect. It is short and catchy, yet manages to evoke so many images. Goth elicits memories of barbarian tribes, towering Gothic cathedrals and darkness, while ham is a simple English town ending. Thus, it manages to be a reference, but still sound like a real place.
But because Gotham is not a honest-to-goodness physical place, the most important part of its reality is in the mind. Gotham is darkness, it is madness, an art-deco nightmare. It is shadow, towering skyscrapers and muggings on street corners. When you think of Gotham City it brings to mind images of a real place, just as if you thought of New York, London or Hong Kong.
I haven't been able to find quite as much information the geography of the city itself, but I did find some interesting things. Strange Maps, which actually began this endeavor, has a post with some information on various places in the city, as does Gotham and Beyond. I'm not well versed enough with comics to comment further on those particulars, so let's just get to the maps.
The first image comes from Batman: The Animated Series, and honestly isn't all that helpful. Though it's a nice sepia tone and I just like the way it looks.
This next map is the original from Strange Maps and wonderful for city details, but not great for larger area names. As far as I can tell Gotham City is comprised of three main islands, two secondary islands and a few other islands here or there (including Blackgate Isle, #41 on the map). The islands I consider secondary are the two triangular ones, the northern containing Arkham Asylum, the southern the Tricorner Yards. These seem very integrated into the city and important, with an expressway going through the northern and the shipyards on the southern. The other islands are not given much detail, only showing a few bridges connecting them to the main islands and one road.
Here is a subway map of Gotham, which gives some nice detail on neighborhood names. It also gives us the areas of Uptown, Midtown and Downtown (obviously modeled after NYC), but no names for the actual islands which these areas of the city are on. A non-subway map similar to this can be found here. It has a zoom function, lists all sorts of street names and is without a doubt the best map of the city I have found. Oddly, both of these maps get rid of four of the five islands in the south of the city.
From these maps we get the following neighborhoods.
Uptown: Granton, Farrow, Harrow, Jerold.
Midtown: Gainsly, Reatton.
Downtown: Haysville, Stevensburgh, West Harlow.
Additionally, there is the Narrows between Midtown and Downtown, and the island in the southwest corner is South Hinkley.
I would appreciate any input those readers with more comic book knowledge than me have.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Geography of DC Comics: America
This post is the bastard child of many of my loves... history, geography, comics, sports, and perhaps some other things which I don't even realize. Read at your own risk.
The past couple of weeks I've been roaming the internet, trying to find information on the geography of DC Comics cities. Most of the information I've found has been on Gotham City and Metropolis, which have truly taken on a life of their own, morphed and evolved as more and more writers have molded them. Of course, that is the main problem, so many people have written about them for decades and it's gotten pretty convoluted.
I've always felt that there was a strange dichotomy between the two cities, one light and one dark... one grimy and real, the other a shining white utopia. Certainly this is simplistic, but it is the impression that I always got.
But where are they?
Gotham is on the east coast, that much is for sure, but the same can't be said for Metropolis. While Metropolis fits on the east coast for a variety of reasons (not the least of which being that it's supposed to be near Gotham), it is also supposed to be close to Smallville (at least according to the TV show, which I haven't actually seen), which is in Kansas. That might better place Metropolis in southern Illinois or somewhere along those lines. A couple of maps I found even have Metropolis where New York City should be, which is odd considering that NYC is in the DC Universe and Metropolis doesn't really fit there geographically. But, I don't like putting Metropolis in the Midwest, just because it would seem too far from Gotham. So I'm just going to put them both on the east coast. There is no perfect place for them, as you can see if you visit the various links in the article, but I like the idea of the cities being on either side of Delaware Bay the best, Gotham in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware. Sure that gives us the problem of increasing Delaware's population over tenfold and both of these huge cities probably being too close to Philadelphia, but I like the idea of the cities being so close, yet separated by a fairly large body of water.
The other big question, is what actual city do they correspond to? If I had to choose, I would have to say Gotham City is definitely New York City, the name even comes from the nickname given to NYC by Washington Irving. But, Metropolis is New York, too. I think that each of them, in their own ways, fits that city more than any other, but I'm not going to get into that big argument, because it doesn't really matter. If you want, you can read all about it in the various links strewn through the post. In the end, they are almost real, at least in the conceptions in people's minds.
While Gotham and Metropolis get all the limelight, there are actually many other fictional cities in the US, though I don't really know how large these others are. I'm assuming fairly big if they have their own superheroes, which leads to the obvious problem of large cities being oddly close together. This is explained away by the DC Universe earth being larger than ours. Which is kind of cool actually. There a bunch of cities (Coast City, Fawcett City, Gateway City) which I had never heard of before starting this. DC Atlas, the DC Comics Database and Wikipedia are all good places to find more information.
The past couple of weeks I've been roaming the internet, trying to find information on the geography of DC Comics cities. Most of the information I've found has been on Gotham City and Metropolis, which have truly taken on a life of their own, morphed and evolved as more and more writers have molded them. Of course, that is the main problem, so many people have written about them for decades and it's gotten pretty convoluted.
I've always felt that there was a strange dichotomy between the two cities, one light and one dark... one grimy and real, the other a shining white utopia. Certainly this is simplistic, but it is the impression that I always got.
But where are they?
Gotham is on the east coast, that much is for sure, but the same can't be said for Metropolis. While Metropolis fits on the east coast for a variety of reasons (not the least of which being that it's supposed to be near Gotham), it is also supposed to be close to Smallville (at least according to the TV show, which I haven't actually seen), which is in Kansas. That might better place Metropolis in southern Illinois or somewhere along those lines. A couple of maps I found even have Metropolis where New York City should be, which is odd considering that NYC is in the DC Universe and Metropolis doesn't really fit there geographically. But, I don't like putting Metropolis in the Midwest, just because it would seem too far from Gotham. So I'm just going to put them both on the east coast. There is no perfect place for them, as you can see if you visit the various links in the article, but I like the idea of the cities being on either side of Delaware Bay the best, Gotham in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware. Sure that gives us the problem of increasing Delaware's population over tenfold and both of these huge cities probably being too close to Philadelphia, but I like the idea of the cities being so close, yet separated by a fairly large body of water.
The other big question, is what actual city do they correspond to? If I had to choose, I would have to say Gotham City is definitely New York City, the name even comes from the nickname given to NYC by Washington Irving. But, Metropolis is New York, too. I think that each of them, in their own ways, fits that city more than any other, but I'm not going to get into that big argument, because it doesn't really matter. If you want, you can read all about it in the various links strewn through the post. In the end, they are almost real, at least in the conceptions in people's minds.
While Gotham and Metropolis get all the limelight, there are actually many other fictional cities in the US, though I don't really know how large these others are. I'm assuming fairly big if they have their own superheroes, which leads to the obvious problem of large cities being oddly close together. This is explained away by the DC Universe earth being larger than ours. Which is kind of cool actually. There a bunch of cities (Coast City, Fawcett City, Gateway City) which I had never heard of before starting this. DC Atlas, the DC Comics Database and Wikipedia are all good places to find more information.
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