Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark oi! where's metropolis?

I've been assuming all along that metropolis is LA. eh? i've seen info that hints that metro is right next to gotham, though, which i've also been assuming is basically new york city, but in the "visual guide" from batman begins, they mention gotham concomitantly with new york city. eh?

i vote it's LA! I sez lois and clark are in california!

Nonono. Metropolis is in Illinois. Check the maps, it's the only Metropolis in the US.

But, if you're talking about the DC Universe, which includes the show, then Metropolis has almost always, with the except of Smallville and one of the revisions<?>, been on the East Coast, somewhere around Delaware. Or is Gotham in Delaware... We've discussed it before, and had links, which you can find all in this topic .

In the two exceptions I mentioned, Metropolis has been fairly close to St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi. But it has never been on the West Coast.

humph. it's La-La land to me.

i thought it was in New York?

mmmmm..... ok. try this on.

since this is a fictional world we're dealing with, mention at the start of the story where you think the city/cities are, if it matters in your story.

yeah, most seem to think it's east coast.....hang on a sec. I was thinking about this this morning in bed before I got up. I *think* I know why i've got metro, calif stuck in my head. in one of the christopher reeve superman movies, I believe lex was buying up all of the property along a certain line in calif, and then he was going to somehow trigger a massive earthquake and have the west sliver of calif pretty much sunk into the ocean, which would mean his relatively "cheap" middle-of-the-state purchases would now be rendered ocean-front property, and he could sell 'em at a tidy profit. am I remembering right? I saw that as a lil kid, naturally, so i think from this, metropolis was firmly plastered into my brain as california. eh?

New York is mentioned in the show, so it can't be. From MOSB:

LabRat

Reasons why it can't be on the southern west coast:

There is snow in Metropolis. You rarely get snow in California.

See other weather patterns mentioned in the show.

No talk of beach babes

They refer to nearby big cities, like New York.

The look of Metropolis is based on older cities. California does have beautiful older areas, but the eastern cost is of course older.

Here and there, Clark's flight path to the Kent's farmhouse from Metropolis is referred to and it match more of the 'eastern' as opposed to 'western' side of the US.

I sence more of an eastern 'culture'.

Ohhh, Clark with a summer tan *YUM*....hmmm he wouldn't get one would he? Nevermind. Drat.

(oh I know you can get a tan on the east coast. It isn't all dreary )

Definitely in the east coast..the weather is not so "Californian"...

From the Pilot:



Andreia

And not that I'm entirely sure of it, but I do believe that Siegel and Shuster, who created Superman, lived in New York. Back in those days, in the 1930s, New York, not L A, was the city of tomorrow!

Ann

Metropolis is kind of a double of New York, located (is this fanon?) in the state of New Troy. It's <i>not</i> New York, but seems to resemble it closely. Likewise for Gotham, which seems to be common is publications around and about New York.

Of course Metropolis isn't really really New York, just like the world of Superman isn't the real world, either. But more to the point, Metropolis represents certain aspects of New York - New York as seen through a shiny bright rather 1930-ish looking-glass, as it were. Remember that Siegel and Shuster created their dream city in the 1930s, when Empire State Building had just become the building that touched the sky and the original King Kong movie put the modernistic glory of New York on breathtaking display in movie theaters all over the world. Consider the meaning of that word, metropolis, too. It means "big city". And no city on the Earth represented the idea of the "big city" as perfectly as New York did in the 1930s.

Siegel and Shuster siezed on the bright and futuristic aspects of New York, refined them and turned them into the building blocks of their dream-city, Metropolis, protected by the ultimate futuristic hero, Superman. Therefore Metropolis resembles New York more closely than it resembles any other city, but it is not New York. So if we could somehow enter the world of Superman, we would find that Metropolis probably co-exists with New York. And while New York might still be the Big Apple in this universe, it would nevertheless be very much second banana to Metropolis! But because Metropolis is a kind of futuristic dream version of New York, it would have very many traits in common with New York, such as the fact that it would be situated on the east coast of the United States, just like New York.

Ann

Seigal and Schuster met in high school in Cleveland, OH. So that means Metropolis must be based on Cleveland. . .

Just kidding.

I have absolutely never heard of it on the west coast. The somewhere south of NYC on the Atlantic Ocean makes sense.

Looking at it from the creater's view point, most of us in Cleveland don't particularly think of the west coast too often -- probably especially in Segal and Schuster's time. The easy coast, though, is a fairly easy drive away and I think most of us have been to NYC and other east coast metropoli at least once if not more. I would think they would have had a better frame of reference to create a city in the east somewhere . . . or even on a great lake -- Chicago, Toronto, Cleveland.

Anybody else think that Metropolis, according to that picture, looks an awful lot like it's located somewhere near Scranton, PA? Or is that just my imagination?

I was thinking PA as well from that map.

Cheryl

Siegel and Schuster were indeed from Cleveland, and the early strips did borrow from Cleveland for the look of Metropolis. Probably because that was the only big city the two teens were familiar with.

Metropolis evolved into an east coast city mainly because that was where the big cities were. The fact that all the major publishing houses, and large corporate headquarters were based in New York had a lot to do with it.

Metropolis was said to represent the more 'optomistic' side of New York, whereas Gotham was the darker version. In the early days of comic books they never considered using the names of real cities. Theirs was a fictional world that had fictional cities.

The Flash hailed from Central City, which most often was allied with St. Louis. At least until Keystone City became part of the same DC universe. Now one might consider those 'twin cities' to be Kansas City Mo, and Kansas City Ks.

Of course, Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) hailed from Coast City, which was the DC version of Los Angeles or San Francisco. Coast City was destroyed, but it got better.

Anyway, the main point is in the DC Universe, their fictional cities were never meant to actually 'be' a substitute for a real city, but they were reminiscient of a similar, corresponding city in our earth prime.

Tank (who wonders where Hobbs Bay is located in the Smallville version of Metropolis - which can be seen from a watertower in Smallville, Kansas)

Sileas happily contemplates her framed Forever "Wings" poster

Not that it counts for much , but most (if not all?) the skyline shots of Metropolis were of Chicago. Shame on them for using such recognizable stock footage!

Sara (who always thought Metropolis was meant to mirror New York City )

I liked the shots of Chicago.

I agree that Metropolis is most definitely on the east coast. I also thought it was NYC, but somewhere in Pennsylvania or Delaware makes just as much sense.

I know that in the Superman movies with Christopher Reeve most of the shots of Metropolis were NYC. I guess I never paid enough attention to notice that L&C used Chicago?