donbosco
Distinguished Member
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Spider-Man lives in Queens. Luke Cage and Iron Fist protect my part of town (Harlem/Manhattanville), Daredevil, very appropriately patrols Hell’s Kitchen. While The Thing was from the Lower East Side, The Fantastic Four joined Iron-Man and The Avengers in fancier neighborhoods. [A Map of Superheroes in NYC & The Areas They Protect - Brilliant Maps]
DC heroes like Batman and Superman live in fictional cities, and, of course, their own universe not the Marvel one. That these characters are primarily urban made such places at least ‘somewhat’ believable for me as a comic book-devouring boy from #DeepChatham.
Even in the predominantly rural context of The Tar Heel State I was particularly country. That’s why I use the phrase #DeepChatham to name where I’m from. Pittsboro, after all, had a roundabout and Siler City had a Drive-In and a Byrd’s Supermarket. Indeed, the most popular derisive cheer chanted at those of us from Bear Creek’s Chatham Central High School by no less than the cosmopolitan fans of Jordan Matthews High in Siler CITY was “Hey, hey, you hicks, get back into the sticks!” Of course we responded with, “Hey, hey, you bums, get back into the slums!” Stinging rebuke, eh?
Those comics books, especially the Marvel ones, bought at Teague’s Coffee Shop in ‘downtown’ Siler City, made New York City real. The high-up rooftops, their water towers, the alleys, fire escapes, and pushcarts were ‘other-planetary’ but since those heroes and villains had emotions, failures, workplace woes, and often cried tears of both sadness and rage I could buy into metropolitan reality. I had…quite simply…sympathy for those far off people. As time passed as I lay in my bed late at night in #Bonlee I listened a lot to Powerful AM stations in cities like St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and NYC. In particular I tuned in to Boston’s WBZ Radio. Those voices-the accents-the topics of conversation brought city-folk closer and humanized them (even though they scandalously and openly advertised BEER!). “Schaeffer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than ONE!” I knew something very different was ‘out there.’ By the way, even WBZ didn’t make me a Red Sox fan. #Orioles forever!!
Of course TV sitcoms were mainly set in cities too (we did have Andy and Barney-but even they lived in a town-I guess I could identify with the Darlings though). Families like the Ricardos, Ricky and Lucy, or the Evanses (J.J.) who lived in a Chicago high-rise apartment showed a way of life, albeit filtered significantly, almost totally alien.
Still those spots where Newhart, Archie Bunker, and Kramer lived their madcap lives were good spots for comedy quite clearly with nosy neighbors and all sorts of odd interactions-odd at least to me-abounded. Crime and detective shows were also so often set in those locales-from ‘Kojak’ to ‘Starsky & Hutch.’ You could have sold me pretty much anything in the depictions of city-life so varied and rich were the scenarios. What did I really know?
Maybe that’s why Spider-Man and Daredevil were two of my favorite comic heroes-they made The City Real. Somewhat subliminally they both were also spawn of the Atomic Age, radioactivity was behind the powers of both heroes. Those reading this that were born in the ‘50s or ‘60s likely remember Mutually Assured Destruction and the ticking of the Doomsday Clock. We could hear that sound inside our heads even in #Bonlee. In New York City these days we live adjacent to a building, Prentis Hall, that was a site for research on nuclear power. Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker, could have worked there as a graduate student! (In Spider-Man’s origin he’s working in a lab and bitten by a spider made radioactive by experiments going on in the building) Now I’ve got the water towers and the streets of Luke Cage’s neighborhood (#Harlem). It’s a far piece from #Bonlee. Spider-Man and Daredevil have been a big help with my adjustment.
#OTD (August 10) in 1962 Spider-Man first appeared in Issue #15 of Marvel’s ‘Amazing Fantasy,’ a sci-fi comic in need of readers. The cover captured kids and the story went deeper. Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko ran with it.
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