dewline | Entries tagged with fictional geography

Can anyone please upload a scan of the "Ask the Answer Man" section of the "Daily Planet" page from Detective Comics #470 (June 1977)?

Current Mood: nerdy

How does anyone get Texas as the host of Charlton's Point, when the comics-publishing company that city was named for was based in Connecticut?

https://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/comments/la6ilu/fictional_us_cities_of_the_dc_universe/

Current Mood: curious

I gave myself an indulgence on the weekend: The Atlas of Imagined Places.

Five thousand or so fictional places, and the author and cartographer putting this book together tried to figure out where they'd all be. Don't even try to figure out how to string together the backstories of how all these places from different fictional universes could co-exist. Just enjoy and debate the placements. I will.

Current Mood: nerdy

Inspired by this tweet:

twitter.com/andrewfarago/status/1381730705424613382

Wondering what the Jabari in particular thought of hockey when they first learned of it.

And if Kilimanjaro is drying out nowadays because of climate derangement, then what's happening to the Jabari lands?

Not a happy thought there.

Current Mood: distressed
Current Location: Home-for-now
Current Music: No music at the moment

I dreamt that I was in some alternative version of Ottawa trying to navigate its version of the Transitway. And where Sandy Hill and the University of Ottawa are located in reality, this version had what seemed like an airport terminal next door to the station (which was reachable from Centretown across the Rideau Canal - or River? - by pedestrian bridge). And Hurdman and the U of O had blurred together somehow with a giant cinema multiplex.

Current Mood: Puzzled

Sometimes, it throws me off: seeing landmarks I know to be associated with either Vancouver - or have I actually seen anything from Vancouver yet? Yes, I have! - or Chicago in Batwoman's version of Gotham.

There does seem to be some interest in borrowing design thought from the Nolan movies here - just look at their version of Wayne Tower as impersonated by the Chicago Board of Trade building...and yet, I expect Gotham to be its own place.

Current Mood: contemplative

With a particular focus on Birnin Zana AKA "the Golden City".

https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/black-panther-wakanda-golden-city-hannah-beachler-interview/574420/

I wish I had an option for "Inspired" on the Mood list here.

Current Mood: impressed

I am mildly surprised to see myself the sole person explicitly identifying this as an Interest in my Dreamwidth profile. Surely with all the fans of DCU (across their multiverse), Marvel (comics and cinematic), Trek, Honorverse, and other such franchises, there should be more of us sharing in this Interest?

Cobbling this together with help from members of National Capital FreeNet (NCF) of Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada:

1. Avonlea, PEI - the Anne novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery and their adaptations for other media
2. Mariposa, from "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town", by Stephen Leacock. Described as "somewhere near the end of a rail line that goes towards Hudson's Bay".
3. Crocus, Saskatchewan (Jake and the Kid and According to Jake and the Kid, WO Mitchell)
4. Manawaka, Manitoba (various books by Margaret Lawrence)
5. Shelby, Alberta (Roses Are Difficult Here, WO Mitchell)
6. Mercy, SK from _Little Mosque on the Prairie_
7. Dog River, SK from _Corner Gas_
8. Algonquin Bay, ON from _Cardinal_ (the TV series and, I'm led to understand, the detective novels that inspired it)
9. Moosejaw Heights, SK from the superhero cartoon series _Atomic Betty_
10. Timberton, BC - hometown of the DC Comics heroine Sparx, and her family, the "Special" Forces
11. Lynx River, NT from _North of 60_
12. Wildrose, AB from _The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon_ by W.O. Mitchell
13. Baker City, ON from Eric Desmarais' "Elizabeth" novels
14. Seguin Sound, ON (The Year of the Rabbit, FT Lyon)
15. Three Pines, QC (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny)
16. Danger Bay, BC (from the TV series of the same name)
17. Blossom, AB (from the radio series _Dead Dog Cafe_ by Thomas King)
18. Deptford, ON (various books by Robertson Davies)
19. Midian / Shere Neck, AB, from Clive Barker's Cabal.
20. Letterkenny, ON - from the sitcom of the same name
21. Long Bay, ON - from the movie and TV series sharing the title of _Men With Brooms_

If I keep bouncing back and forth between this entry and the thread on NCF, I could end up confused...

Current Mood: nerdy

Hey, British friendlisters. This might catch your attention. Thanks to Jonathan Crowe's Map Room blog for the clue.

Also, does Canada have enough mythology to build a map of its own? I'd think Geist Magazine already did such a map, but I can't be sure yet.

https://londonist.com/london/maps/fake-britain-map-fictional-locations-england-scotland-wales

Current Mood: nerdy

Yet another permutation on the 2000 map of Gotham.

I remember that Grant Morrison, when he was writing the comics, was operating from the assumption that the neighbourhoods from the map used in Nolan's first two Bat-movies were sandwiched in between the ones in the 2000 post-No Man's Land map. Not sure about the neighbourhood names from the variant we saw in "The Dark Knight Rises" yet...and the post-Man of Steel movies featuring Affleck's Batman ignored it completely along with Byrne's Six Boroughs for Metropolis.

But Gotham's supposed to be over 400 years old, almost as old as Metropolis and NYC, and the main islands should cover roughly twice the ground of Manhattan Island if I understood the scale correctly. She's got lots of surprises in her streets and lanes and parks yet to reveal.

https://twitter.com/UberKryptonian/status/1043631454356492288/photo/1

Current Mood: nerdy

Perception was kind enough to upload a case study of their work on Batman v Superman this week. That case study includes a map of the Metropolis-Gotham region as envisioned for the movies DC and WB have been making.

That map clearly does not hew to the maps of the two cities as published in the comics over the last couple of decades. Granted, the production team had the right to plant the two super-cities ten miles and a harbour apart from each other. Speaking for myself alone, I'd hoped that Byrne's Six Boroughs as originally drawn up for Metropolis in 1986, as well as the islands of Eliot Brown's 2000 map of Gotham could've made the cut.

Oh well...this is its own thing to begin with.

Current Mood: nerdy

To give a sense of what was/is possible with the version of Gotham City I came to believe in as a result of working with Matt Brady on the Daily Planet Guide to Gotham...I found a map of the outline of Manhattan Island, and scaled it to match that of Eliot Brown's map.

The Gotham Islands may be shorter on the north-south axis, but far wider on the east-west axis. So there's still room for at least twenty numbered avenues, and my research into references in both visuals and dialogue in comics published between 1983 and 2011 have explicitly referred to a 33rd Avenue (Robin v.4 # 162).

Numbered streets...might be more difficult to manage, given that north-south axis mileage. We have references of those ranging from 2nd Street("A Lonely Place of Dying", where it meets 2nd Avenue at Apollo Square) to 242nd (Batgirl v.3 # 6).

There's probably several ways for a competent cartographer or graphic designer to render all of that somewhat consistant.

Note - 2 Jan 2016: I will have to find new homes for a few graphics once I torch my LJ account. Like this one. Good thing my Flickr account is still active.

Current Mood: nerdy

rob_sawyer_blog pointed out a debut novel by one Gerald Brandt, The Courier, about to hit the bookstores soon. The Courier is subtitled on the cover as "a San Angeles novel".

So, you know me by now. Alternative geographies, fictional geographies, they get my attention right off. Naturally, I went looking to see if the name had come up in SF&F before.

Some of you will already know what I'm about to say: that the name has a history, inside and outside of the genre. "Prior art" is, I think, the phrase for it. And Wikipedia has some detail on the cultural history of the name. Real-worlds politics, dystopian SF, super-heroic fantasy...it's been making some serious rounds.

Using the name and concept in yet another novel isn't necessarily a bad thing, and everyone who's used it has their own spin on the idea, but to these cultural-historian eyes of mine, I don't belive there's any way to make an exclusive claim on it at this point.

Current Mood: nerdy

There was this on Wired.

Not the first time it's been done. The newspaper comics of the 1970's did it. So we know where Zack Snyder's getting some of his inspiration.

I just wish they'd stick with Eliot Brown's map in toto for Gotham, like they decided to stick with John Byrne's Six Boroughs for Metropolis in Man of Steel. As it is, we've seen from photos taken at location shoot sites that they cribbed the location names from that map, and are using a modified map of Detroit for Gotham to plant those names on.

Some interesting mapping linkages re: Detroit and Gotham for the purpose of this movie:

http://whatculture.com/film/batman-v...fan-see.php/19

https://twitter.com/tribluis/status/532676691752386560

What do you see in those visuals?

Current Mood: nerdy

Been keeping up with the new TV version of The Flash, and so far it's been an entertaining run. One little annoyance, though.

Check this pic from "Mashimero" on Flickr out.

Look at the license plate on the police cruiser. Notice anything about it?

Anything that isn't there and ought to be?

Current Mood: irritated

Just had a leaf-through at the local public library, specifically the first post-Flashpoint Flash collection, Move Forward, featuring Francis Manapul's material.

I have a vague feeling we covered this before...here or elsewhere...but anyway:

Did Manapul really go and replace all the existing Keystone-Central neighbourhood names with names of cities and neighbourhoods from the Greater Toronto Area? I had to take off my glasses and squint and I'm still not sure that I actually saw names like Vaughan, Pickering, Scarborough, and so forth on the map that showed up in that hardcover.