Batman vs Superman with Spoilers

Alex Luthor Epic Trailers on YouTube does a great Dark Knight Returns with trailer mash ups

 

I watched both parts last week. I'm not a huge fan of WB's overall animation style that still hasn't completely divorced itself from the 90s Batman cartoon series, but that gripe aside it's a good movie. I also thought Reagan sounded a little more W-ish than Reagan-ish, but that's a minor complaint.

 

Do real American cities exist in the DC universe?

Where are Gotham and Metropolis supposed to be located?

 

New York and Chicago, maybe?

 

Both are NYC. Just in the DC universe there is some sort of spatial difference. How much is not really known, I believe.

One of a multitude of reasons I always preferred Marvel to DC. Hated the Metropolis/Gotham thing.

 

So New York City doesn't exist, right?

 

In Superman: The Movie, when they are in the train station, you see a schedule that reads : Gotham, NYC, Boston, etc. on it. So I am sure it exists. Why the original author's of DC went with fictitious cities, I have no clue.

 

But I thought Metropolis wasn't terribly far from Kansas? Like, drivable in a day or two?

 

It does not in the comics, but they sprinkle it in the background in some of the movies (norris beat me to it).

 

Had a comic book nerd to the extreme friend of mine tell me metropolis was chicago

 

My understanding is that Metropolis is like a bigger Chicago. Like if you combined Chicago and Toronto.

 

In Superman #2 (Fall 1939), Metropolis was actually placed in the US state of New York, making it the earliest specific reference to the location of Metropolis.[4]

- Wikipedia

And it appears Smallville was in driving distance, but was a "small town just inland from the eastern seaboard." It wasn't until John Byrne rebooted the series in the mid-80's that it was labelled as in Kansas. In fact, early drawings show a lot of hills in Smallville. Not sure how prevalent hills are in Kansas, though.

This is all from quick Google searches, as my knowledge of the DC universe is severely lacking and I am learning this as I go and sharing it here. So do not take it as an argument or definitive.

 

Kansas is literally flatter than a pancake, when adjusted for scale. There are some rolling "hill like" topographic regions, but they aren't really hills so much as swells of grass and earth like a gently rolling sea.

 

I'm satisfied with Norris' explanation. Apparently it's just a stupid comic book.

 

Comic books are fast & loose with continuity anyways

 

Where the Chicago angle could have come from is that Shuster used the Toronto skyline as his skyline for Metropolis. But since then, most have used NYC as its skyline.

All in all, Marvel was correct in just dumping fictitious cities and going with 103893403034 super heroes in NYC.

 

Ya, and I guess they have to be because otherwise most heroes would be in their 80's or 90's by now.

 

Did you know that there were west coast comics, with a few familiar heroes being based out of San Francisco or LA? Weird.

 

I think a lot of this motivated the whole "reboot" phenomenon that became rampant in the 1980's and beyond (starting with Miller's Batman Year 1 and Byrne's Superman).

 

First I remember big time was West Coast Avengers. But 90% of super heroes in Marvel seem to be located in NYC.