Being a famous big city, San Francisco is not immune to this. Characters from both Marvel and DC have had adventures in the Golden City, some of whom consider it to be their home. Marvel's Daredevil (in the comics) has been located in San Francisco for a while now, while DC has made it the home of both the Teen Titans (again, in the comics, not the TV show) and of their character Zatanna. Zatanna is so prevalently placed in San Francisco, that I'm actually doing my Final on how her comics portray the city in relation to what we've discussed in our readings in this class.
Probably the most famous version of San Francisco that we've seen in comic book related media is from Disney's Big Hero Six. Based off of the Marvel comic of the same name, Disney took the Tokyo based characters and story and merged it with San Francisco, thus providing us with the one and only San Fransokyo.
What intrigues me about this is that in the comics, the team is supposed to represent a more diverse group of characters by having them all originate and operate out of Japan, with characters like Sunfire and Silver Samurai being two of their initial team members. To promote the film in a way to likely branch out to a wider audience, Disney dropped the Marvel tag (despite these being Marvel characters), merged Tokyo with San Francisco, and chose characters from the comic book team's roster that could be manipulated to appear, in my opinion, more American-ized. The comics have no connection to San Francisco, so for Disney to merge the city with Tokyo can to me only be done in order to draw the attention of American viewers. I don't think this causes any discussion about the politics behind the city or dives into its history at all, but simply provides an interesting visual that overall says very little about what we know about San Francisco.
Any other comic book readers out there? What do you think about companies like DC and Marvel using cities like San Francisco as locations for their characters to act out their adventures? Is there a way for the companies to shed light on the harsher realities that these cities carry, or do they simply portray a static, fetish view of the cities as a way to market their comics/related media to a wider audience?
Hey Nick-
ReplyDeleteThis actually seems like a really rich question and I would be interested to see what kind of conclusions you draw in your final analysis. Personally, as someone who has never been a huge comics guy, I always assumed many of these 'fictional' cities to be a kind of thinly veiled version of their real-world counterparts. For example, I always sort of ran on the assumption that Gotham seemed to pretty much serve as a fictional New York City. There seem to be a lot of political overtones in the portrayal of Gotham. Lacking better knowledge of the comics, there seems to at least be a pretty heavy social commentary on poverty and crime in the city.
Knowing that there are comics in which New York and Gotham coexist seems, at first, to deflate this allegorical assumption. But maybe not. Maybe the creation of a world in which these two cities both exist makes the subtle assertion that these are every-city problems, not just the Big City we assume Gotham to be. But who knows. I know there were also a lot of scenes in The Dark Knight shot in Chicago (I think it was there), so there's another twist. Anyways, cool topic!
Nick, I think this is a fantastic question. Going off of what you said about Big Hero Six, which, yes, I know, wasn't your question at all, I also thought it was interesting the way they Americanized both the characters and the setting. I didn't know that until the people of Tumblr informed me, but I found it to be an odd choice when they could have just left it in Tokyo or moved it to San Francisco all together.
ReplyDeleteAs for setting characters in real life big cities, I always assumed it was to give readers a way to connect to the characters more. It's a little easier to feel for a little guy from Brooklyn than somebody from a town that has a culture that needs to be invented. And like Bryan, I connected the fictional towns to real world counterparts, which, I admit, always left me a bit confused when the characters crossed over into those actual cities.
That said, I think there's a certain leeway with fictional cities that allows critiques to be made about politics or society without just coming out and saying it that some writers may not feel entirely comfortable with given a real world setting. In Gotham, you can make the mayor corrupt and evil and have it be an allegory, but if the setting is New York, it feels too much like you're actually trying to say something.