Where exactly is Gotham City located?

[Erik Lehnsherr]

In what state does DC have it listed?

[Turd_Ferguson]

My understanding is that it's in New York, a little up state from NYC, but not that far upstate, because Bludhaven is supposed to be even further upstate.

[Brian Cronin]

When DC did it "officially," they determined that it was in New Jersey, with Metropolis being in Delaware (allowing the two cities to be fairly close to each other, but in different states, and also in states without really big cities).

This, of course, is not something that most writers follow, because Gotham being in Jersey is...well...kinda dorky. :)

-Brian

[the_big_billbowski]

When DC did it "officially," they determined that it was in New Jersey, with Metropolis being in Delaware (allowing the two cities to be fairly close to each other, but in different states, and also in states without really big cities).

This, of course, is not something that most writers follow, because Gotham being in Jersey is...well...kinda dorky. :)

-Brian


I kind of like the idea that Gotham is in New Jersey as opposed to NY. Doesnt make sense for Gotham to be in NY as they have so many real large cities, NYC the biggest. Now Gotham being kind of a scummy place fits in perfectly with Jersey. (and i happen to like Jersey, Red Bank and Atlantic City my 2 favorite places). Delaware is another great place and would really make sense that Metropolis is there, but I always think Conneticuit when I think of Metropolis. I don't know it's just me I guess.

[Lorendiac]

I try not to worry about it :)

"However," I say, somewhat contradicting myself . . .

Gotham is definitely somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard of the USA. I have never gotten the impression that it was in a New England state; I have never gotten the impression that it was in a Southern state - such as Virginia or anything further south on the East Coast. That leaves: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland.

So you could pick whichever of those five you wanted to believe Gotham was in, and you'd have about a 20% chance of "getting it right."

Or you can tell yourself it's part of a "fictional state" that only exists in the DCU but not in the real world!

Did any of that help? (Probably not, but it's the best I can offer!)

[Erik Lehnsherr]

No definite answers? Bah. But at least I have an idea at last.

[Tomodachi]

huh, I always think of Metropolis as = Chicago and Gotham = NYC. I just get confused when they actually mention NYC and Chicago.

[YoungG03]

I never picture Batman to be from Jersey but its cool...Does Bruce Wayne/Batman have an accent? Clark?

I mean I doubt Superman does cause noone really sees hes from the country or anything but that would be cool if he couldnt mask it.

[EmmaFrostSlavingFanBoy]

I figured that Gotham City is an East Coast City in Southern Connecticut or Coastal New Jersey or maybe on the Chesapeake before Baltimore. But up the Hudson River makes sense about an hour North of New York.

I always thought that Metropolis was on the East Coast or maybe Chicago since Clark is from Kansas and Chicago is the closest really big city to Kansas.

[Smell]

Not to get too bogged down in states and cities, but as a foreigner, I've allways thought of Gotham as New York at night, and Metropolis as New York in the daytime.

Makes a mockery of bats and Supes trading cities - hay maybe it's earth 74625 or something pre-post crisisy

Dom

smells like the hudson

[Heavy_P]

I've always heard it as Gotham City being based in New Yourk.

Metropolis is actually based on Toronto, because that's where Joe Shuster was from. The Daily Planet was based on the "Daily Star" which is now the Toronto Star.

[bat2supe]

I don't know if it was cleared by DC but for me, Gotham is more in the East Coast(New York or New jersey is cool since there are no big or well known city there) & Metropolis being in the West Coast(more like San Francisco or Los Angeles).

I've got that idea since Gotham is a dark & obscure city & since metropolis by opposition is the shinning city(+ the Superman animated city made Metropolis looking like West Coast to me).
Superman being a solar battery, he needs the West Coast sun & Batman being a night hero, he needs the East Coast climat +, Ny is the polar style city.
For what it comes to distances, I think both cities must be far from each other due to the heroes differences. Counting on Superman habilities & Batman planes that's not a big deal for our heroes.

[Bicycle-Repairman]

In the earliest stories, Batman was actually based in New York City. His base of operations was identified as Gotham City in Detective Comics #48 (February 1941). "Gotham" is a nickname for New York City.

The exact location of Gotham City and Metropolis has varied over the years. Sometimes Gotham has been depicted as being across the bay from Metropolis, other times the two cities are hundreds of miles apart. There has been speculation that Metropolis is in New York, Ohio, Delaware, Illinois, or Kansas.

[stillanerd]

When in doubt, turn to Wikipedia and this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham_City

Not only do you find A LOT of information regarding Batman's base of operations, but, if you scoll down, you'll see that, yes, Gotham IS in New Jeresy, although the artists modeled it after other cities.

Hope this helps. :)

[Guts/Batman]

Wizard in 96 said that Metroplois was based on Toronto and Gotham City was based on NYC.

[Hellcow]

I've never given a thought to where Gotham or Metropolis is. Its a fantasy, who cares?

But one thing I've never understood, is the apparant need that a lot of Americans have to know that something is located in America, before they are even interested in it.

Can some of the American readers explain this hang up to me?

[Guts/Batman]

I've never given a thought to where Gotham or Metropolis is. Its a fantasy, who cares?

But one thing I've never understood, is the apparant need that a lot of Americans have to know that something is located in America, before they are even interested in it.

Can some of the American readers explain this hang up to me?

Where do you get that notion? I couldn't care less if it was in America or not, however, it does have some impact on continuity and timelines. It helps with the understanding of the story.

Distances between cities (Star City, Metropolis, Gotham City, Opal City, etc), etc. Essentailly for adding up all those little story inconsistencies that I love to pick at.

The only reason why I wanna know is because it helps my sanity when it comes to figuring out continuity and timeline of events. For it not to have a spot on the map just adds to continuity hell.

If you see it there, that's fine but I think you're looking too much into it.

[Sk8maven]

I wonder if DC is going to use Infinite Crisis to make some kind of logical sense of its geography? They DID shuffle cities around after Crisis on Infinite Earths, putting Keystone and Central Cities in the Midwest across a major river from each other (they had previously been the same city in different universes).

Maybe this time they'll "overwrite" a few "real-world" cities with their "fictional" equivalents. It doesn't really make the stories any more "realistic" when you read about events in a "New York" that only remotely resembles the one you know about.

Metropolis was originally Cleveland with an overlay of Toronto. But "Deadman" screwed both that and the possibility that "Gotham City" might be based on Boston.

Maven

[Bicycle-Repairman]

When in doubt, turn to Wikipedia and this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham_City

Not only do you find A LOT of information regarding Batman's base of operations, but, if you scoll down, you'll see that, yes, Gotham IS in New Jeresy, although the artists modeled it after other cities.

Hope this helps. :)

I read the article too, and while it said that recent writers have declared Gotham City to be in New Jersey, its location has varied over the years from writer to writer. It will probably change again in the future. I think it was a map in the DC Heroes Role Playing Game's Background/Roster Book that first depicted Gotham as being in New Jersey (Metropolis was shown to be in Delaware).

Gotham City has often been portrayed as an alternate version of New York City. The story "Into the Den of the Death Dealers" from Detective Comics #411 (May 1971) depicts a "Statue of Freedom" in Gotham Bay which looks just like the Statue of Liberty. The Gotham State Building and Twin Towers resembled the Empire State Building and World Trade Center respectively. However, Gotham's architecture and geography changes depending on the artists and writers. Silver Age stories featured a Batman Lighthouse in Gotham Bay that resembled a giant statue of the Caped Crusader holding up a torch and a Mount Gotham with a monumental Batman face carved into the rock.

[Lorendiac]

But one thing I've never understood, is the apparant need that a lot of Americans have to know that something is located in America, before they are even interested in it.

Can some of the American readers explain this hang up to me?

I hadn't even noticed this hangup. I have not heard that millions of American kids stubbornly stay away from the bookstores every time a new Harry Potter novel is coming out, saying, "Gee, I might like to buy it - if only it were set in an American private school, instead of somewhere in England."

I personally have probably read thousands of science fiction and fantasy novels in my lifetime, and many of them aren't even set on Planet Earth at all - which means they obviously are set nowhere near my native country, the USA. This doesn't bother me.

Or did you only mean American comic book fans - admittedly a much smaller number than the millions of Americans who read the Harry Potter books?

If so, I'm still curious as to where you got this idea from. From your brief comment, here's what I imagine happening: Standing in a comic book shop and hearing American fans saying, "Hey! This thing is the first issue of a new series by one of my favorite writers! Looks really interesting! Maybe I'll buy it - oh, wait. Flipping through it, I get the idea it's set in Paris, France. Everybody knows nothing worth reading about ever happens in Paris or anywhere else outside of the USA. Guess I'll just load up on Batman titles instead - he usually stays in Gotham, which is definitely an American city!"

I've never actually heard a fellow customer in an American store saying all that to his friends as he browses through the new titles, but if you have heard it happen, then I'm honestly interested in hearing more about it! :)

[aelio]

I always thought that Gotham and Metropolis where DC's analog of NYC. Metropolis representing, and existing in the place of Manhattan, while Gotham was Brooklyn. Is there an NYC in the DCU?

[Lorendiac]

I always thought that Gotham and Metropolis where DC's analog of NYC. Metropolis representing, and existing in the place of Manhattan, while Gotham was Brooklyn. Is there an NYC in the DCU?

Yes, there is definitely an NYC in the DCU.

We've had scenes set in the United Nations building in NYC. I seem to recall that when the Justice League International was funded by the UN, the "embassy building" (headquarters and living space) for the American-based branch in the JLI title was somewhere in New York City.

Heck, come to think of it, the final sequence of the "A Death in the Family" story arc was set in the United Nations in New York City, with the Joker sauntering onstage as the new UN Ambassador from Iran, if memory serves (he had made a deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini, or someone who sure looked like him, in order to get diplomatic immunity).

But I tend to agree with you that Gotham and Metropolis are both heavily based on the real-life NYC, particularly when being written and/or drawn by people who live or have lived in the Big Apple :)

Ed McBain does something similar in his novels of the 87th Precinct. I read an essay by him in which he explained that the 87th Precinct is in the fictional city of Isola, which just happens to be divided into five boroughs, etc. He said that originally he meant his books to deal with stories about fictional detectives working in the same precinct of the NYPD - but I think he was afraid that no matter how much research he did into police procedures in NYC, he'd get complaints from readers saying stuff like, "No, a real detective in NYC wouldn't fill out Form 5480-C in a case like that - he'd fill out Form 5840-G instead! Don't you know anything about your subject?"

Using a fictional city would give him a good defense to such a nitpicking criticism: He could say, "No, that may be the way an NYPD detective would do it - but in my imaginary East Coast city of Isola, a detective fills out the 5480-C and likes it!" :)

[the goddamn batman]

metropolis and gotham, are inspired by ALL major cities. just look at the names, they are the most anonymos names used for cities, usually used to describe ANY major city (i really wanted to use "metropolis", but went with "city" instead, for obvious reasons)

but, new jersey, on the coast, is about as exact as it is going to get. hope that helps, i think thats IS the most definate answer you will find. its the most that i found.