Universal Gotham
March 1, 2022 5:02 AM Subscribe
“There is no definitive Gotham,” says Barbara Ling, the production designer on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. “The excitement is reinventing with each new vision.” from Designing Gotham [The Ringer]
Count me as someone who'd really like to see that vision of Batman's Gotham. Maybe Edgar Wright could direct it? I like the idea of contrasting the ridiculous grimdarkness of recent Batman films with having everything take place in a small English village.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:29 AM on March 1, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:29 AM on March 1, 2022 [12 favorites]
I’m looking forward to this new ad campaign by the Pork Producers of America.
posted by zamboni at 7:04 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 7:04 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
“Gotham made Batman,” says Will Brooker, an author and professor of film and cultural studies at Kingston University. “If there was no crime, Batman wouldn’t have a reason to be there.” But unlike Superman’s Metropolis or Spider-Man’s New York City, Gotham’s corrupt and nocturnal urban landscape has never remained static or consistently mapped.
I really, really love the idea that Gotham itself is some sort of quasi-mystical, constantly shifting living environment, secretly shifting and moving itself around in some complex symbiotic relationship with the schemes of the heroes and villains within it. Maybe Dark City is secretly a prequel to Tim Burton's Batman, an urban forest for concrete and asphalt fae.
"There's no road to Arkham Asylum. No map. You decide to go insane. And maybe, if it wants to, Arkham will let you."
posted by mhoye at 7:16 AM on March 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
I really, really love the idea that Gotham itself is some sort of quasi-mystical, constantly shifting living environment, secretly shifting and moving itself around in some complex symbiotic relationship with the schemes of the heroes and villains within it. Maybe Dark City is secretly a prequel to Tim Burton's Batman, an urban forest for concrete and asphalt fae.
"There's no road to Arkham Asylum. No map. You decide to go insane. And maybe, if it wants to, Arkham will let you."
posted by mhoye at 7:16 AM on March 1, 2022 [14 favorites]
I really, really love the idea that Gotham itself is some sort of quasi-mystical, constantly shifting living environment, secretly shifting and moving itself around in some complex symbiotic relationship with the schemes of the heroes and villains within it. Maybe Dark City is secretly a prequel to Tim Burton's Batman, an urban forest for concrete and asphalt fae.
China Mieville’s The Gotham
Bruce Wayne is a Hermetic inventor and industrialist. Robin is a human-bird hybrid, mutated though Wayne Industries’ poisonous waste effluence. The Batmobile is a steam-powered blimp.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:25 AM on March 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
China Mieville’s The Gotham
Bruce Wayne is a Hermetic inventor and industrialist. Robin is a human-bird hybrid, mutated though Wayne Industries’ poisonous waste effluence. The Batmobile is a steam-powered blimp.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:25 AM on March 1, 2022 [11 favorites]
I really, really love the idea that Gotham itself is some sort of quasi-mystical, constantly shifting living environment, secretly shifting and moving itself around in some complex symbiotic relationship with the schemes of the heroes and villains within it.
mhoye
This was the thesis of Grant Morrison's superb 2005-2013 epic Batman run, that Gotham is a mystical machine for making Batman.
These Batman/comicbook film discussions are always a bit frustrating because the articles and those involved present these approaches and ideas as if they were groundbreaking explorations of new territory when they've been thoroughly and deeply explored in the comics for decades. Like the nature of Gotham and its relationship to the concept of Batman is one of the oldest and most commonly explored concepts in comics.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:34 AM on March 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
mhoye
This was the thesis of Grant Morrison's superb 2005-2013 epic Batman run, that Gotham is a mystical machine for making Batman.
These Batman/comicbook film discussions are always a bit frustrating because the articles and those involved present these approaches and ideas as if they were groundbreaking explorations of new territory when they've been thoroughly and deeply explored in the comics for decades. Like the nature of Gotham and its relationship to the concept of Batman is one of the oldest and most commonly explored concepts in comics.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:34 AM on March 1, 2022 [8 favorites]
Like the nature of Gotham and its relationship to the concept of Batman is one of the oldest and most commonly explored concepts in comics.
So... while I agree with that, I believe that these explorations are constrained simply by virtue of being about Batman, and Batman is - by a wide margin - the least interesting person in Gotham.
posted by mhoye at 9:00 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
So... while I agree with that, I believe that these explorations are constrained simply by virtue of being about Batman, and Batman is - by a wide margin - the least interesting person in Gotham.
posted by mhoye at 9:00 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Then check out the critically-acclaimed mid-2000s series Gotham Central about regular members of the of the Gotham City Police Department and other normal people in Gotham in which Batman makes almost no appearances!
Seriously, the idea that any of this is new ground that the comics haven’t thoroughly covered in their long, long history is just factually wrong. There have been plenty of stories about regular people in Gotham and how all the cape craziness in their city affects them.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:18 AM on March 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
Seriously, the idea that any of this is new ground that the comics haven’t thoroughly covered in their long, long history is just factually wrong. There have been plenty of stories about regular people in Gotham and how all the cape craziness in their city affects them.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:18 AM on March 1, 2022 [10 favorites]
No one mentions the 1940s Batman serial, which takes place largely on roads and railways well outside of town, and in which stately Wayne Manor is an exterior shot of a two-story Georgian-style house in what is clearly a subdivision. They worked with what they had, and I respect that.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:52 AM on March 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 10:52 AM on March 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
These articles are aimed at the large mainstream audience who've seen at least a couple of the Batman movies, not at the much, much smaller group of us who happen to be familiar with the comics. Nine times out of ten, the journalist writing the piece knows nothing beyond the movies either. For that audience (and those writers too) discussing the comics in any detail is of no interest whatsoever.
In that context, trying to make sense of the various comics arcs where Gotham features as central character would be a nightmare anyway. Each arc contradicts the last, and you simply don't have the space to explain them properly to an audience which has little prior Bat-knowledge to lean on and no idea of what today's comics have shown themselves capable of.
Given all this, the best we can hope for is probably a passing nod to what the comics have already achieved in their own imaginings of Gotham. I doubt we'll get even that.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:52 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
In that context, trying to make sense of the various comics arcs where Gotham features as central character would be a nightmare anyway. Each arc contradicts the last, and you simply don't have the space to explain them properly to an audience which has little prior Bat-knowledge to lean on and no idea of what today's comics have shown themselves capable of.
Given all this, the best we can hope for is probably a passing nod to what the comics have already achieved in their own imaginings of Gotham. I doubt we'll get even that.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:52 AM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
For me, Gotham is Chicago. The end.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:16 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:16 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm not very well read when it comes to comics, but I always assumed
Gotham == New York City
Metropolis == Chicago
Gotham is obviously NYC, and Metropolis is Chicago because it's Smallville-adjacent and Smallville is distinctly midwestern.
And aren't there other cities in the DC universe which are stand ins for real life cities?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:23 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Gotham == New York City
Metropolis == Chicago
Gotham is obviously NYC, and Metropolis is Chicago because it's Smallville-adjacent and Smallville is distinctly midwestern.
And aren't there other cities in the DC universe which are stand ins for real life cities?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:23 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not very well read when it comes to comics, but I always assumed
Gotham == New York City
Metropolis == Chicago
Apparently according to canon it's the other way around, at least according to whatever analysis I've read about it. I've thought of it the same way but I'm also not a comics superfan.
This goes back to the very earliest Batman and Superman comics as well as the earlier TV shows, like the old black and white live action Superman show Metropolis was pretty clearly supposed to be NYC, but I've never felt that Gotham should really be Chicago, either.
They're also supposed to be really close to each other, as in right across the water and in view of each other or something, which, yeah, where does New Jersey fit in this interpretation? *shrugs*
These fictional cities have always been liminal and ephemeral, which is kind of the accidental or haphazard point about the world building in this particular comics lore and DC universe.
I'm down with Dark City being Gotham, with both being NYC.
Gotham and Metropolis might as well be the same city seen through different lenses or viewpoints. It's shiny, wholesome Metropolis through the optimistic views of Superman, and dark, gritty, industrial Gotham through the cynical views of Batman. Superman mostly just flies over the whole city, Batman is down in the dirty alleyways mostly on foot or in the Batmobile.
posted by loquacious at 12:52 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Gotham == New York City
Metropolis == Chicago
Apparently according to canon it's the other way around, at least according to whatever analysis I've read about it. I've thought of it the same way but I'm also not a comics superfan.
This goes back to the very earliest Batman and Superman comics as well as the earlier TV shows, like the old black and white live action Superman show Metropolis was pretty clearly supposed to be NYC, but I've never felt that Gotham should really be Chicago, either.
They're also supposed to be really close to each other, as in right across the water and in view of each other or something, which, yeah, where does New Jersey fit in this interpretation? *shrugs*
These fictional cities have always been liminal and ephemeral, which is kind of the accidental or haphazard point about the world building in this particular comics lore and DC universe.
I'm down with Dark City being Gotham, with both being NYC.
Gotham and Metropolis might as well be the same city seen through different lenses or viewpoints. It's shiny, wholesome Metropolis through the optimistic views of Superman, and dark, gritty, industrial Gotham through the cynical views of Batman. Superman mostly just flies over the whole city, Batman is down in the dirty alleyways mostly on foot or in the Batmobile.
posted by loquacious at 12:52 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Batman writer and editor Dennis O’Neil put it this way (although this exact quotation varies in several versions): “Gotham is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at 3 a.m., November 28 in a cold year. Metropolis is Manhattan between Fourteenth and One Hundred and Tenth Streets on the brightest, sunniest July day of the year.”
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 PM on March 1, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 PM on March 1, 2022 [13 favorites]
They're also supposed to be really close to each other, as in right across the water and in view of each other or something, which, yeah
So Metropolis is Duckberg and Gotham is St. Canard.
Got it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:18 PM on March 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
So Metropolis is Duckberg and Gotham is St. Canard.
Got it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:18 PM on March 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
DC and Marvel have done a surprisingly small number of crossovers together. One of the best, JLA/Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Pérez, has Superman arriving on Marvel Earth and remarking that the planet is slightly smaller with fewer cities and less urban growth.
DC has Gotham, Metropolis, Gateway City, Central City, Coast City, and a bunch of other cities that seem to have been originally based on real cities, but it also has stories set in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, San Diego, and all the other cities that the fictional ones used to be stand-ins for.
posted by straight at 1:25 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
DC has Gotham, Metropolis, Gateway City, Central City, Coast City, and a bunch of other cities that seem to have been originally based on real cities, but it also has stories set in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, San Diego, and all the other cities that the fictional ones used to be stand-ins for.
posted by straight at 1:25 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
My Gotham has a giant skyscraper with an artificial tree in the middle of it.
posted by sardonyx at 1:31 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sardonyx at 1:31 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Batman writer and editor Dennis O’Neil put it this way (although this exact quotation varies in several versions): “Gotham is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at 3 a.m., November 28 in a cold year. Metropolis is Manhattan between Fourteenth and One Hundred and Tenth Streets on the brightest, sunniest July day of the year.”
Quoted in the article as
Quoted in the article as
As O’Neil later distinguished, Gotham took on the shape of “Manhattan below 14th Street at 3 a.m., November 28, in a cold year,” exuding a timelessness with its 19th-century, gargoyle-heavy architecture. Conversely, O’Neil considered the art-deco Metropolis—Superman’s “city of tomorrow”—as Manhattan on “the brightest, sunniest July day of the year.”posted by zamboni at 1:36 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I love the idea of Gotham being partly Glasgow, if only for the vain hope of a chase through Glasgow's daft wee orange subway.
posted by scruss at 1:54 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 1:54 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
My own fan-canon imagination of Gotham: established originally as Popham by Samuel Wayne and Jonah Cobblepot in 1607, the puritan colonists turned towards the Netherlands for survival. The Dutch took over administration of the colony in exchange for relief that saved the starving Pophamites, in the process renaming the city as Gotham.
Although eventually restored to English rule during the time of Queen Anne, Gotham's architecture remains influenced by the aesthetics of the Dutch and the French, who both ruled for considerable spans of time. One of the most notable derivations of this is that Gotham Maine is the center of the largest Dutch-American cultural center and identity, celebrating Orange Day to this day. While not the capital, Gotham is the largest city of Maine, a thriving and gritty rival to Boston and New York City alike.
BTW, canonically, Gotham is in New Jersey. But I prefer the counterfactual of Gotham as being the evolved surviving version of Popham. It also sets up Bloodhaven to be another remnant from a larger New Holland than America experienced historically.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 2:04 PM on March 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Although eventually restored to English rule during the time of Queen Anne, Gotham's architecture remains influenced by the aesthetics of the Dutch and the French, who both ruled for considerable spans of time. One of the most notable derivations of this is that Gotham Maine is the center of the largest Dutch-American cultural center and identity, celebrating Orange Day to this day. While not the capital, Gotham is the largest city of Maine, a thriving and gritty rival to Boston and New York City alike.
BTW, canonically, Gotham is in New Jersey. But I prefer the counterfactual of Gotham as being the evolved surviving version of Popham. It also sets up Bloodhaven to be another remnant from a larger New Holland than America experienced historically.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 2:04 PM on March 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
LeRoienJaune: His historical activities are a couple decades too late for Popham, but it feels like Thomas Morton would be a good fit in your counterfactual head cannon. Although maybe he'd overlap too much with your backstory for Cobblepot?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 3:26 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 3:26 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
For people from Chicago, Chicago is the answer and subject of any and every Chicago
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 3:30 PM on March 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 3:30 PM on March 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
According to... something I watched recently, maybe Um, Actually, Gotham is in New Jersey and Metropolis is in Delaware. Central City is in, like, Missouri.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:40 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:40 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also when I was a wee tot watching the Batman/Tarzan Hour, I thought it was Gothlum.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:43 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:43 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
old black and white live action Superman show Metropolis was pretty clearly supposed to be NYC
...unless you were familiar with downtown LA, and recognized City Hall masquerading as the Daily Planet building.
posted by Rash at 6:26 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
...unless you were familiar with downtown LA, and recognized City Hall masquerading as the Daily Planet building.
posted by Rash at 6:26 PM on March 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I've mentioned this before, but using my city—Sydney—which the Wachowskis used in The Matrix as their bland-everycity, corporate-modern Mega World, was a stroke of minor genius on their part, and I think it's really part of what makes that comic book movie work. The audacity of taking one of most recognisable and iconic skylines on the planet, with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and then... not using them!
There's a particular sting in it for those of us who recognise each of the otherwise identical glazed office buildings (I used to work in the building Trinity's helicopter crashes into), because it's a constant unheimlich reminder that yes, you think your city and your place is special and lovely, but what if it's actually a programmed horrorscape of violence, or worse, a nasty knowing comment about the authoritarianism and conformism of Australian society?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:36 PM on March 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
There's a particular sting in it for those of us who recognise each of the otherwise identical glazed office buildings (I used to work in the building Trinity's helicopter crashes into), because it's a constant unheimlich reminder that yes, you think your city and your place is special and lovely, but what if it's actually a programmed horrorscape of violence, or worse, a nasty knowing comment about the authoritarianism and conformism of Australian society?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:36 PM on March 1, 2022 [7 favorites]
“There is no definitive Gotham,” says Barbara Ling, the production designer on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.
Daring choice with that pull quote. Inside me, it inspired a war between running screaming from anything that tried to find a positive in anything to do with those movies, and reading it out of spite. I mean, I get the idea that they were supposed to be fun and camp, but they always struck me as a soulless attempt at printing money made by people who actively loathed having anything to do with the project, headed by a director that couldn’t care less about the material.
I get that Batman has a long streak of camp, but there’s camp and silliness made with warm feelings (Brave and the Bold, as well as a good number of Animated Series episodes), and then whatever the Schumacher movies were. Burton’s camp was toned down, but still present, and there was an excitement, a feel that they were getting away with making something so dark and oppressive. I’ll always prefer the Gotham of the first film, just for the variety. Too much of Returns was spent among the same few set pieces, and it felt unexplored, a tourist guidebook based visit where the first one felt like being shown around by a long suffering resident.
Oddly, until Dark Knight, Gotham was *never* Chicago for me, but fit in more with the quote people are mentioning: Gotham is New York on its worst day, while Metropolis is the dream of what New York could be. Then Dark Knight came out, and, as much as I like the film, I was disappointed in its abandonment of the much more Gothamy Gotham in Begins. Plus, it repeatedly took me out of the movie at inopportune moments. Like, seriously, what “bridge and tunnel” crowd?! Where are those ferries going? South Haven?! There was something lazy about it, like a shot of the Hong Kong harbor with the words New York superimposed over it, that just seemed out of place in a movie that was aiming for something higher.
I guess another way to look at it is that Chicago is just too landlocked, too solidly a part of the area around it. Gotham is how it is because it could only build up, upon taint and ruin because there was nowhere to spread out. It’s the terror of rats turning on each other because of overcrowding, rather than the aspirational reaching outwards of the skyscrapers of Metropolis. The heights of Gotham’s towers are explicitly the wealthy trying to distance themselves from the streets below and the people who live in them. Yet, being Gotham, by dint of having been built on rot and corruption, the streets are never so far away that they can’t come bursting into your lofty penthouse with all the madness and horror you had hoped to escape.
That’s where, even as geographically as impossible as it was, I liked the Gotham of Begins, and the callousness of the city cutting off the Narrows and considering them lost. That felt like Gotham.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:57 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Daring choice with that pull quote. Inside me, it inspired a war between running screaming from anything that tried to find a positive in anything to do with those movies, and reading it out of spite. I mean, I get the idea that they were supposed to be fun and camp, but they always struck me as a soulless attempt at printing money made by people who actively loathed having anything to do with the project, headed by a director that couldn’t care less about the material.
I get that Batman has a long streak of camp, but there’s camp and silliness made with warm feelings (Brave and the Bold, as well as a good number of Animated Series episodes), and then whatever the Schumacher movies were. Burton’s camp was toned down, but still present, and there was an excitement, a feel that they were getting away with making something so dark and oppressive. I’ll always prefer the Gotham of the first film, just for the variety. Too much of Returns was spent among the same few set pieces, and it felt unexplored, a tourist guidebook based visit where the first one felt like being shown around by a long suffering resident.
Oddly, until Dark Knight, Gotham was *never* Chicago for me, but fit in more with the quote people are mentioning: Gotham is New York on its worst day, while Metropolis is the dream of what New York could be. Then Dark Knight came out, and, as much as I like the film, I was disappointed in its abandonment of the much more Gothamy Gotham in Begins. Plus, it repeatedly took me out of the movie at inopportune moments. Like, seriously, what “bridge and tunnel” crowd?! Where are those ferries going? South Haven?! There was something lazy about it, like a shot of the Hong Kong harbor with the words New York superimposed over it, that just seemed out of place in a movie that was aiming for something higher.
I guess another way to look at it is that Chicago is just too landlocked, too solidly a part of the area around it. Gotham is how it is because it could only build up, upon taint and ruin because there was nowhere to spread out. It’s the terror of rats turning on each other because of overcrowding, rather than the aspirational reaching outwards of the skyscrapers of Metropolis. The heights of Gotham’s towers are explicitly the wealthy trying to distance themselves from the streets below and the people who live in them. Yet, being Gotham, by dint of having been built on rot and corruption, the streets are never so far away that they can’t come bursting into your lofty penthouse with all the madness and horror you had hoped to escape.
That’s where, even as geographically as impossible as it was, I liked the Gotham of Begins, and the callousness of the city cutting off the Narrows and considering them lost. That felt like Gotham.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:57 PM on March 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
Gotham is the largest city of Maine
But The Joker says “ha ha ha,” not “ayuh ayuh ayuh.”
Gotham is a mystical machine for making Batman.
Definitely check out Dark Knight, Dark City, where the demon Barbathos was introduced.
I’m looking forward to this new ad campaign by the Pork Producers of America.
There was a story in The Further Adventures of Batman where the Riddler uses “Bring-home-the-bacon” to represent “Got-ham.”
posted by MrBadExample at 10:30 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
But The Joker says “ha ha ha,” not “ayuh ayuh ayuh.”
Gotham is a mystical machine for making Batman.
Definitely check out Dark Knight, Dark City, where the demon Barbathos was introduced.
I’m looking forward to this new ad campaign by the Pork Producers of America.
There was a story in The Further Adventures of Batman where the Riddler uses “Bring-home-the-bacon” to represent “Got-ham.”
posted by MrBadExample at 10:30 PM on March 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
In DC canon, both Gotham and Metropolis are supposed to be about where Delaware is, across a harbor from each other.
For me, this is bullshit.
In my head, Metropolis has always been an idealized Chicago. In the 30's it still had that City of Tomorrow image. Skyscrapers! Elevated Electric trains! And it's what I feel a kid from Kansas would think of first as going to 'The Big City'.
Gotham, on the other hand, needs to be further north (longer nights) and on the Atlantic coast. Let's say a fictional Providence, Rhode Island that was as Lovecraftian as it was mobbed up.
On the coast, because part of the lore you can create for 'why is Gotham like that?' is that it was built on top of slaughtered natives. Then the puritan colonists burned witches there; on the site that would later be a slave market. Then it was a Triangle Shirtwaist sweatshop, then etc etc. Even before the colonists, it was a cursed place to the natives, and before that I dunno, the landing site of a prehistoric meteor made of elemental Evil from the Big Bang.
Gotham is a representation of any time and place that's just incomprehensibly wrong, yet people still somehow manage to live there.
Rather than Nolan's clean lines of Chicago and HK skyscrapers, I think the better live-action 'Gotham but realistic' was setting Joker in the Taxi Driver-esque 'Times Square in the 70's, pimps and porno theaters, whatever isn't bankrupt is on the take, you're not a New Yorker until you've been mugged at knife point' era. It's not Gotham if no one questions "people really live like this?" because the point of Gotham is that yes they do, all the time, over and over.
And last but only important to me, I can'tell remember much else, or even who wrote it, but there's a one-shot story that takes place in the Midway Orphanage (being around Pittsburgh) where two young boys are placed momentarily. Bruce Wayne, who has just watched his parents die in a holdup; and Lex Luthor, who has just pulled of his first perfect crime - murdering his parents for the insurance money. Who's a Bruce raised in Metropolis, and what would Lex's Gotham be like?
posted by bartleby at 12:38 AM on March 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
For me, this is bullshit.
In my head, Metropolis has always been an idealized Chicago. In the 30's it still had that City of Tomorrow image. Skyscrapers! Elevated Electric trains! And it's what I feel a kid from Kansas would think of first as going to 'The Big City'.
Gotham, on the other hand, needs to be further north (longer nights) and on the Atlantic coast. Let's say a fictional Providence, Rhode Island that was as Lovecraftian as it was mobbed up.
On the coast, because part of the lore you can create for 'why is Gotham like that?' is that it was built on top of slaughtered natives. Then the puritan colonists burned witches there; on the site that would later be a slave market. Then it was a Triangle Shirtwaist sweatshop, then etc etc. Even before the colonists, it was a cursed place to the natives, and before that I dunno, the landing site of a prehistoric meteor made of elemental Evil from the Big Bang.
Gotham is a representation of any time and place that's just incomprehensibly wrong, yet people still somehow manage to live there.
Rather than Nolan's clean lines of Chicago and HK skyscrapers, I think the better live-action 'Gotham but realistic' was setting Joker in the Taxi Driver-esque 'Times Square in the 70's, pimps and porno theaters, whatever isn't bankrupt is on the take, you're not a New Yorker until you've been mugged at knife point' era. It's not Gotham if no one questions "people really live like this?" because the point of Gotham is that yes they do, all the time, over and over.
And last but only important to me, I can'tell remember much else, or even who wrote it, but there's a one-shot story that takes place in the Midway Orphanage (being around Pittsburgh) where two young boys are placed momentarily. Bruce Wayne, who has just watched his parents die in a holdup; and Lex Luthor, who has just pulled of his first perfect crime - murdering his parents for the insurance money. Who's a Bruce raised in Metropolis, and what would Lex's Gotham be like?
posted by bartleby at 12:38 AM on March 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Astro City vol 1 issue 4 is one of the better 'why would someone live in Gotham' stories, without actually being set in Gotham City.
posted by bartleby at 12:47 AM on March 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by bartleby at 12:47 AM on March 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Too orderly a city tends to get gentrified into a state of stultifying dullness. One reason to stay living in Gotham might be that it has a lot more lively dive bars, snotty little rock 'n' roll bands and interesting fringe theatre than Metropolis does. Gotham is NYC's lower east side before the yuppies and the hipsters took over. It's having CBGBs in your neighbourhood rather than an artisan coffee bar.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:22 AM on March 2, 2022
posted by Paul Slade at 4:22 AM on March 2, 2022
But The Joker says “ha ha ha,” not “ayuh ayuh ayuh.”
But imagine the possibilities!
I like the idea of Batman luring villains out of hiding by placing too-good-to-be-true classified ads in Uncle Henry's.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:51 AM on March 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
But imagine the possibilities!
I like the idea of Batman luring villains out of hiding by placing too-good-to-be-true classified ads in Uncle Henry's.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:51 AM on March 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
I really, really love the idea that Gotham itself is some sort of quasi-mystical, constantly shifting living environment, secretly shifting and moving itself around in some complex symbiotic relationship with the schemes of the heroes and villains within it.
I'd love to see a Terry Gilliam-like take where Gotham might really be an experiment: a city-sized psychiatric hospital, with all the freedom and scale of a metropolis. Basically, it is the Arkham Asylum inverted and writ very large, and Batman is just another patient — though he believes otherwise, of course, as Gilliam heroes often do. Gordon is a psychiatrist, role-playing as law enforcement to help treat Batman of his narcissistic vigilantism, but the lines are starting to blur for them, as well.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:54 AM on March 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'd love to see a Terry Gilliam-like take where Gotham might really be an experiment: a city-sized psychiatric hospital, with all the freedom and scale of a metropolis. Basically, it is the Arkham Asylum inverted and writ very large, and Batman is just another patient — though he believes otherwise, of course, as Gilliam heroes often do. Gordon is a psychiatrist, role-playing as law enforcement to help treat Batman of his narcissistic vigilantism, but the lines are starting to blur for them, as well.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:54 AM on March 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
There's a lot of room with the Gilliamesque take to do interesting things.
In his fantasy world, Bruce Wayne thinks he inherited massive wealth from his murdered parents. In reality, they are alive and well, and they used their immeasurable fortune to set up the well-funded and unique private institute called Gotham, a city-as-hospital that performs cutting-edge experimental psychological research — just to cure their very mentally-ill child.
As he grows from childhood to adolescence to adulthood within the confines of Gotham, his obsession with revenge inevitably progresses. The Waynes continue to observe their son at a distance through the lenses of doctors and nurses, their own motivations and ethics being unclear and possibly malicious.
Like Bruce, Gotham's criminal underground is made up of patients who suffer similar delusions, whose rich families were able to commit them for similar reasons as the Waynes.
Within the Gotham-as-city simulacrum, acts of vigilantism and crime are allowed and encouraged by the institute as treatment and therapy, to heal and cure both criminal and vigilante of their respective delusions. Of course, the treatments never work and relapse is inevitable.
Gordon and Pennyworth work as high-level operatives for the institute to help collect data and keep the "experiments" running. But perhaps they are gradually losing themselves to the alternate reality that Gotham tries to maintain for its patients. For Gordon, particularly, are crimes committed within a simulation real and worthy of applying his or her internal ethical code, or is the real crime when wealthy families can lock up their kids for experimental research?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:57 AM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
In his fantasy world, Bruce Wayne thinks he inherited massive wealth from his murdered parents. In reality, they are alive and well, and they used their immeasurable fortune to set up the well-funded and unique private institute called Gotham, a city-as-hospital that performs cutting-edge experimental psychological research — just to cure their very mentally-ill child.
As he grows from childhood to adolescence to adulthood within the confines of Gotham, his obsession with revenge inevitably progresses. The Waynes continue to observe their son at a distance through the lenses of doctors and nurses, their own motivations and ethics being unclear and possibly malicious.
Like Bruce, Gotham's criminal underground is made up of patients who suffer similar delusions, whose rich families were able to commit them for similar reasons as the Waynes.
Within the Gotham-as-city simulacrum, acts of vigilantism and crime are allowed and encouraged by the institute as treatment and therapy, to heal and cure both criminal and vigilante of their respective delusions. Of course, the treatments never work and relapse is inevitable.
Gordon and Pennyworth work as high-level operatives for the institute to help collect data and keep the "experiments" running. But perhaps they are gradually losing themselves to the alternate reality that Gotham tries to maintain for its patients. For Gordon, particularly, are crimes committed within a simulation real and worthy of applying his or her internal ethical code, or is the real crime when wealthy families can lock up their kids for experimental research?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:57 AM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
There was a two-issue Brian Talbot Batman story called Mask back in 1992 which depicted Bruce Wayne as a delusional alcoholic with long-term hallucinations of being a costumed crimefighter. The whole idea's retconned back to normal at the end of this tale, of course, but it does hit some interesting notes along the way. The article extracted below has more details and some scanned pages.
Here Bruce Wayne has no access to any allies, any gadgets, any technology or any of the classic tricks we’ve all become used to. All he has is pain and the memory of a trauma that has never left him, and even in a weakened state, drugged and subjugated, he is absolutely sure of one thing: his parents were killed in front of him, and his life was never the same again.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:20 AM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Here Bruce Wayne has no access to any allies, any gadgets, any technology or any of the classic tricks we’ve all become used to. All he has is pain and the memory of a trauma that has never left him, and even in a weakened state, drugged and subjugated, he is absolutely sure of one thing: his parents were killed in front of him, and his life was never the same again.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:20 AM on March 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
For another look at the various Gothams, Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? is pretty good. Because there are multiple Gothams. (I hesitate to recommend anything by Ellis, however his work with So Many of Us gives hope and may influence how you feel about his work, with that said) Warren Ellis had a Planetary/Batman crossover, where they encountered the various Batmans and Gothams out there. It's a bit short, but it's not a bad place to view the conflicting visions.
posted by Hactar at 9:10 AM on March 3, 2022
posted by Hactar at 9:10 AM on March 3, 2022
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The people of Gotham disagree. And by the way, it's pronounced 'Goat-um'.
posted by pipeski at 5:40 AM on March 1, 2022 [6 favorites]