- [Narrator] To me, there's something magical
about seeing a superhero fly, swing, run,
or glide through a city.
It seems only natural
that an overwhelming majority of superhero stories
take place in a busy urban environment
and if the hero comes from Marvel,
then there's really just one prominent location
to talk about.
New York.
I know many of you will be itching to point out
that not every Marvel superhero lives in New York City.
There are the West Coast Avengers,
the Great Lakes Avengers,
the Alpha Flight,
the characters who aren't even on earth, et cetera,
but there's no denying
that many of Marvel's most popular characters
are typically stationed in New York City.
Spiderman, Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil,
the Fantastic Four, even Doctor Strange,
a character who regularly travels
through otherworldly dimensions of chaos and absurdity,
still finds himself operating out of Greenwich Village.
The story often given
as to why Marvel heroes live and fight in New York
is that Stan Lee,
along with just about every writer and artist
who worked at Marvel at the time, lived in New York.
- [Stan] So many of the characters lived in cities
like Gotham City and Metropolis
but I suspect the readers knew
those cities were just made up
and I wanted to make the reader suspend disbelief.
I'm a guy who takes the easy way out.
I had lived in New York most of my life.
I loved New York but mainly, I knew New York.
- [Narrator] As the birthplace of the comic book industry,
it only made sense to set their stories in the Big Apple.
The publishers were familiar with the city,
which made it much easier to write about
and keep consistent from comic book to comic book.
With countless writers and artists
jumping in and out of titles,
it's a much easier transition between creative teams
if everyone can work off of a pre-existing city,
instead of having to learn the layout of fictional one,
like Metropolis or Central City.
In Superheroes, Capes, Cowls
and the Creation of Comic Book Culture,
authors Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor explained
that setting the focus of the Marvel universe
in one real city as opposed to many imaginary ones
created some additional perks.
It demystified the characters' environment,
giving the Marvel universe literal common ground
with its characters, its creators, and its audience.
- [Michael] When you can show real buildings,
when you can show the Empire State building,
it doesn't make New York City fictional,
it makes your characters seem that much more factual.
- [Narrator] in many ways, this is what separates
Marvel from DC Comics.
Marvel tends to make their characters
more real and relatable.
They're meant to be people like us,
who just so happen to have fantastic abilities.
DC's approach, on the other hand, is more aspirational.
Their characters aren't meant to be like us.
Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are intended to be
models who we can look up to as exemplary characters.
In a way, it's realism versus escapism,
a bigger discussion that I will save
for a future video, probably centered around this guy.
- [Batman] Batman, out.
Wait wait, Batman back in.
Forgot to drop the mic.
(crash and electronic squeal)
- [Narrator] Both Marvel and DC set their superhero stories
in cities, which helps to raise the stakes.
A densely populated city means more civilians
in harm's way when disaster strikes,
but by grounding their stories
in the very real city of New York, Marvel ups the ante.
As author Shaun Howe wrote in
Marvel Comics, the Untold Story,
Quote, "Who cared if the ACME skyscraper fell
"or the First National Bank had to give up its cash?
"Marvel's New York City, on the other hand,
"was rife with real stuff to destroy" end quote.
Using New York as the superhero center of their universe
also helped to enhance
the sense of continuity in Marvel comics.
Early on, the most crossover DC characters did
would be on covers of comic books
but rarely in any actual story.
Putting Batman in Gotham and Superman in Metropolis,
isolates each character into different bubbles,
making their bubbles mostly self-contained,
for all readers knew, back in those early days,
the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel
existed in separate universes.
They couldn't actually influence each other.
Marvel embraced a different strategy.
They wanted to create
an expansive, rich comic book universe.
They wanted their readers to know that
not only did their characters coexist in the same world,
but they also, for the most part,
exist in the same location.
- [Stan] We were the first ones to have
all our superheroes in essentially the same place,
in New York City
and they would guest-star in each other's stories.
The fans started referring to it as the Marvel Universe.
- Marvel can have Spiderman cross over
with the Fantastic Four's Human Torch
without needing to explain it.
They're both already there in the same city.
Of course the only reason Marvel worried about
making cross-over simple in the first place,
was that they sold well.
At DC Comics, their heroes may have been
spread out across the country, but they,
like the heroes of Marvel,
still wound up in cities of some kind.
Clark Kent of rural Smallville,
moved to Metropolis to fight evil as Superman.
Wonder Woman, an Amazon princess
living on a secluded island,
found herself State-side in the city.
There are, of course, a few practical reasons
why a writer would pick an urban environment
for a story about a costumed crime fighter.
More crime in cities means that our heroes have
more opportunities to save the day.
And imagine a character like Spiderman
without skyscrapers to swing from.
It just doesn't feel right.
He, like many other superheroes,
was made specifically for the city.
No other environment for a superhero feels
as natural as a concrete jungle
and there's a reason for this.
In an essay by comic book scholar, Alex Boney,
he writes, quote, "The superhero is and always has been
"a response to the rapid, dizzying forces
"of early 20th century modernism." End quote.
He goes on to explain that at the beginning of the 1900s,
the primary place of power and energy was the city,
a relatively new landscape that drastically transformed
the social and geographical makeup of America.
Much like superheroes themselves,
the urban environment inspired both fear and awe.
Cities like New York were building
impressive and intimidating skylines
that cast everyone on the ground in shadow
and then suddenly, here comes a man,
dressed in blue tights with a bright red cape
and underwear on the outside of his pants,
who can literally leap over tall buildings
in a single bound.
From that point forward, superheroes made an effort
to display their dominance over cities,
whether that be in the form of Batman gliding from rooftops,
the Flash, running up skyscrapers,
or Spiderman, swinging through the streets.
In this sense, the city as a character
could be considered an opposing force,
no different than Dr. Doom or Green Goblin.
Just another challenge for our heroes to overcome.
Spiderman might love New York,
but perhaps that's because he,
unlike the people stuck on the ground,
has the ability to defy its rules.
Superheroes weren't created to protect cities,
but to control them, to tame a concrete jungle
that many thought, threatened to dominate everyone else.
But as superhero comics are often seen
through these character's eyes,
we as the readers experience their environment as they do,
a place of life and wonder and colorful characters
and unlimited possibilities.
And at Marvel, it's no surprise that something like this
could be inspired by this.
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