Tuesday 10: Cities in Comics

10. North Salem (Westchester County), NY: Here in Pensacola, we have the Pensacola Christian College compound, unnerving and vaguely menacing in size and scope, expanding and renovating every single day. But, I'd absolutely change my views on PCC's tax-exempt status if it were actually a front for a school for mutants to hone their skills and channel their power for good. I bet it's just the opposite for the neighbors of the Xavier Institute.

9. Keystone City: Home turf for Flashes Jay Garrick and Wally West, Keystone was planted on the same Earth as Barry Allen's Central City post-Crisis. Wonder if this will be important in Final Crisis.

8. Star City:
Elected a bleeding heart liberal/reformed capitalist as mayor, despite his uncanny resemblance to Green Arrow.

7.Coast City:
Took center stage as its destruction became the inciting incident for a dozen years of screeching fanboy outrage. And now it's back and more ghostly than ever.





6.Riverdale: Don't let his pratfalls fool you. Don't judge him by the wacky predicaments he finds himself in. Archie Andrews rules Riverdale with an iron fist (and a letterman's sweater). Betty and Veronica are smitten with him only because their familes are desperate to avoid his wrath.





5.Snowtown:
Not that Warren Ellis' Fell has any shortage of flesh and blood oddballs, but he manages to give Richard Fell's purgatory it's own unsettling little tics, too.





4.Astro City: While Fell above uses its locale as a external force acting on its hero, Kurt Busiek's Astro City does the opposite. The people, the streets, the landmarks... they're all Astro City, and Busiek's mission is to show you how the hero affects the city.




2(tie). Metropolis & Gotham City: Other than Keystone City and maybe Snowtown (we'll see), no cities are their defenders more than these 2 Big-Bang era settlements. While I'm sure wikipedia and several DC Guides will attempt to set me straight, I've always envisioned Metropolis and Gotham to be in the same city, just different neighborhoods. Metropolis, gleaming and advanced and full of optimism, just at the top of the hill; Gotham, tightly packed at the bottom, and not full of hope and moving forward, but slowly.

So what tops the City of Steel and the Dark Knight's domain? A little baby, in comparison...




1.Opal City: If you haven't yet, go read as much of James Robinson's Starman as you can get your hands on. You almost forget you're reading a traditional (not to mention fictional) superhero comic, with nearly every page soaked with the history of one of the DCU's oldest cities. Starman's finale, where the city itself is the target of a brutal and vengeful attack, is everything comics used to aspire to but by and large don't anymore.