Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Where in the US is Metropolis?

In Honeymoon in Metropolis there is a tsunami, so is Metropolis located on the coast?

Often the wharfs are mentioned (as in Chi of Steel) so there is definitely bay or water or river of some sort.

But in Lord of the Flys the New Krypton ship does a fly-over Metropolis and it looks more land-locked like Las Vegas.

So, where do you think Metropolis is located?

Wherever the L&C-verse Metropolis is, it is highly unlikely to be in Kansas, since in the pilot, Clark encountered an electrical storm over Cleveland while he was flying between Metropolis and Smallville. In fact, that Cleveland thunderstorm would indicate that Metropolis is somewhere in the norteastern portion of the U.S.

It is located on Hob(b)'s Bay. The second 'B' is in parentheses because there is some controversy about its spelling. There is a sign with a single 'B' in Junior's underground lair, but elsewhere -- I can't recall where at the moment -- two 'b's are used. Of course, the spelling had been debated for centuries. In fact, it gave birth to one of Shakespeare's most famous lines. <Lynn ducks and runs>

I like to think of it as being in my home state of Delaware. (I've seen arguments that it should be around Dover -- which is located, coincidentally, enough, in *Kent* County.)

There was an extensive discussion of this topic in this thread .

Joy,
Lynn

I've been to Metropolis. They have docks and a casino.
Here is the exit to get to Metropolis.


Here is the town sign.


And here is the BBQ joint(First Eatery in the City limits)

So, Shimauma, where is THIS Metropolis located?

I'm not Shimauma, but if I may be so bold as to answer...

That Metropolis is Metropolis, IL. They have an annual Superman festival. Their chamber of commerce web site is here , and here is the home page for the Superman festival . The city also has a tourism web site . They actually have a newspaper called the Metropolis Planet, and it has a very familiar looking globe in front of it.

Joy,
Lynn

It's near Gotham City, where else?


OK, they're both coastal cities in the vast majority of sources, and in terms of story telling they're both different aspects of New York; Metropolis is the World's Fair New York, the City of Tomorrow, while Gotham is the Film Noir version. It makes sense to have them on the East coast and near to each other.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty certain that most of the last ten years or so of comic books have mentioned that Metropolis is in the state of New Troy, which is clearly located on the East Coast. (Not being a reader of Batman comic books, I don't know if Gotham is supposed to be in the same state.) L&C definitely went with that since their license plates and police cars all prominently displayed 'New Troy.'

However, I don't believe that it takes the place of New York since Superman has visited NYC--in the comics--a couple times.

If you want a geographical position, you could always just watch the pilot again and pinpoint his location from the map they show when he flies to China for the takeout!

This page has some maps and screen grabs. Metropolis is definately on the East Coast and close to NY.

I think DC tends to waffle a lot on the location of Metropolis. Depending on the writer, it's in New York State or New Troy State., or wherever. Occasionally a driver's license will be shown and it's New York. But the geography of New York State has no place at all for another coastal city the size of NYC.

The writers of Lois and Clark pretty obviously used NYC as their template. I mean, they were using maps of the city and relabeling them.

So here's my take - Metropolis overlays our NYC. New Troy overlays our New York State. But Long Island is much smaller or not there. (Otherwise that tsunami would have taken out Long Island and there's no mention of an island being swamped.)
New York City is a much smaller city, maybe up river from Metropolis. Since Metropolis is so large, most of the financial and cultural things we associate with NYC would be associated with Metropolis instead, except, possibly, theater. (We have to give them something, don't we? )

The biggest issue with Metropolis is that it's supposed to be so blasted BIG that there's no place to put it and maintain the real cities.
In the universe where Metropolis has 9 to 10 million people, then NYC simply cannot have 7 million people and cannot maintain it's real world status.

And thank you, Deadly Chakram, for the link to The World of Lois & Clark

Hee, thanks, Shimauma, I was upset that IL wasn't on the list! I remember visiting Metropolis many moons ago, and I even got to "talk" to Superman on a pay phone.

I just ordered a book called 'Superman: The Ultimate Guide To The Man Of Steel,' written by Scott Beatty. In the section on Metropolis, it calls it an east coast city. This is a direct quote:

"Situated on an island separated from the mainland by Hob's River to the north and the West River to the south, Metropolis is a city that has never quite outgrown it's 'expansion phase.' New Troy encompasses the urban boroughs of the island itself. Park Ridge and its subdivisions are Metropolis's oldest suburbs, while Bakerline is home to the city's middle-class. Only the wealthiest can afford the oceanfront real estate of St. Martin's Island and Hell's Gate, and Queensland Park is home to the city's growing immigrant populace."

The accompanying map shows New Troy as an island surrounded in the north by mainland, which is Park Ridge and Bakerline, and in the south by mainland called Queensland Park. Two tiny islands to the east in the ocean are St. Martin's Island and Hell's Gate. The two rivers surround New Troy then rejoin into one on the west and deeper into the mainland.

Don't know if that helps, but the minute I saw that, I couldn't help but think of this topic! And hey, if I can't share my new book with L&C fans, who else can I share it with?

The only thing I can come up with is that their couldn't use real fly over shots of New York for license reasons. But I'd say the in-canon explanation is that that was never Metropolis, just a random US city the ship passed on their way to Metropolis, seen in the next scene with the close up of people running.

Michael

I don't think that anything we see on screen other than possibly maps can be taken seriously - in Superman Returns, for example, the flight path for the airliner carrying the shuttle is shown as heading up the East coast from Florida; but they filmed the baseball stadium scene at a stadium in Los Angeles!

And I just found a reference to a map - According to the IMDB record for Superman Returns:

Lex's computer map on the boat shows Metropolis in the real-world location of Bayonne, New Jersey.

According to Wikipedia:

As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 63,024 people, 25,237 households, and 16,051 families residing in the city.

So about a hundredth the size of Metropolis!

I really need to watch the movie again and check the coordinates in the fax that Lois sends to the Daily Planet - assuming a top speed for the ship of say 30 knots, it couldn't have been more than 60 miles or so from Metropolis.

I always thought of Metropolis being in another island state, like Hawaii. Like right off the coast of NY/NJ. Metropolis, in L&C, is in the state of New Troy.

James