Comic Book Cartography

Want to know where something is or what it looks like inside? Comics usually oblige, sooner or later, because they know how much we love maps, cutaways and diagrams.

The blog Comic Book Cartography was brought to my attention, and I think it's pretty cool. Many of these will be familiar, and a bunch are just odd diagrams of no lasting note.But I'd never seen the map of Little Archie's neighborhood or the 1952 Life map of Pogo's swamp in particular. I'm going to have to spend some time looking through them.

-- MSA.

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  • Wow that is a really cool site. It will definitely take me some time to look through it all.

  • That does look like a great sight.

  • On the JL sattelite on page three each JL member has an office. I would have expected a living room but not offices.

  • I finally got through all the images. Very well done, though many seem to have little to do with cartography.

    The one that jumped out at me was this one, placing Gotham City in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware!

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  • Gotham City in New Jersey makes sense. Metropolis in Delaware makes NO sense.

  • That implies there's a New York in the DCU, and yet no one references it and nothing ever happens there that affects super-heroes. I find that implausible. I've also never heard anyone suggest Metropolis and Gotham City are connected by a bridge.

    Making up maps and diagrams of major things like the Fortress or Bat-Cave or city locations never works. While we think they're cool and official, no one at DC ever references them again, so they're immediately out of date. DC needed a Who's Who of that stuff that the editors, at least, referenced to provide consistency.

    The Dark Knight movies (at least the first two) used Chicago as a backdrop, leading some people to think that Chicago makes a good Gotham City. It's hard to believe that, with a tiny strait separating Metropolis and Gotham City, Superman wouldn't fly over on occasion and stop the Joker from killing people.

    Stan's approach worked very well, as he could throw in sites he saw every day on his way to work. And guys like Spider-Man weren't taking on such gigantic menaces that it would attract other heroes' attention. It's only once the entire city or world are threatened that it became strange that other  heroes didn't notice and step in.

    -- MSA

  • Mr. Silver Age said:

    That implies there's a New York in the DCU, and yet no one references it and nothing ever happens there that affects super-heroes. I find that implausible. I've also never heard anyone suggest Metropolis and Gotham City are connected by a bridge.

    But there IS a New York in the DC Universe. Wonder Woman lived there for a while, when Diana Prince worked for the United Nations. Also, the New Teen Titans headquarters was there.

    Mr. Silver Age said:

    The Dark Knight movies (at least the first two) used Chicago as a backdrop, leading some people to think that Chicago makes a good Gotham City.

    The notion that Gotham City is Chicago goes back further than that. One pet theory (which I've adopted for my personal continuity) is that Gotham City is Dick Tracy's Chicago at night. (Consider: Both Batman and Dick Tracy contend with bizarre and bizarrely deformed villains, and criminal gangs with costumed henchmen.)

    Mr. Silver Age said:

    It's hard to believe that, with a tiny strait separating Metropolis and Gotham City, Superman wouldn't fly over on occasion and stop the Joker from killing people.

    It bothered me a whole lot more that Batman demanded that all the Justice League heroes stay out of Gotham after the earthquake and they all did. That was one of the hundreds of reasons I couldn't swallow that story.

  • But there IS a New York in the DC Universe.

    I see that, which boggles my mind. That's three really large cities--larger than Boston and Philadelphia, I gather--all jammed into a small area on the east coast.

    I think, instead of Crisis, DC should have issued a map. Maybe that would've stuck longer...

    The notion that Gotham City is Chicago goes back further than that.

    It does, but that's the most recent example. No doubt Kane was influenced by Dick Tracy, which helped make Batman so iconic. But the notion that Dick Tracy fought odd guys by day and Batman fought others by night, and never the twain did meet, seems a bit implausible. More likely, the DCU Dick Tracy is in New York, where there are virtually no superheroes to get in his way.

    It bothered me a whole lot more that Batman demanded that all the Justice League heroes stay out of Gotham after the earthquake and they all did. 

    Considering how quickly Superman and GL can restore infrastructure, it becomes difficult to make those ideas plausible to us. At some point, we have to accept the premise of the story for explained or unexplained reasons and move ahead. If that takes too much heavy lifting, then we have to ignore it.

    -- MSA

  • To me it would be neater if Metropolis was Chicago (closer to Smallville) and Gotham City was New York (it is one of its nicknames).

    I found this great article on the New York Public Library site about the origins on the name Gotham.

    http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/01/25/so-why-do-we-call-it-gotham-anyway

  • Metropolis is Cleveland. Clark Kent says so in Action Comics#2 when he sends a story to his newspaper there. I believe it was The Evening News at the time.

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