Where is Smallville and Where is Metropolis on the Map?

[MatterEaterLad]

Wasn't there a continuity where Earth Prime was much like real Earth but was whacked by nucleur holocaust in the late 80s?

[Captain Kal]

Excellent memory and almost exactly right, MatterEaterLad.

The story was a JLA/JSA team-up titled "Crisis on Earth-Prime".  Per Degaton used his timeship to both free the Crime Syndicate of America and then go back in time of our Earth-Prime to steal some nukes.  Guess which era and place he took them from?  Yep, Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Russia accused America of stealing the nukes from Cuba and Kennedy honestly answered it wasn't his guys.  Inevitable nuclear war resulted and our Earth's past was destroyed in a 1963 or so nuclear war.

Fortunately, our erstwhile heroes defeated Degaton, the CSA, then put right our corrupted history.

[MatterEaterLad]

I wish it was my memory, but as I know you know, I stopped reading comics in 1972 and I have a dim view of the Bronze Age...

Actually, I took that from info on Jonathan Woodward's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" homepage, where he intimated that Earth Prime was CLOSE but not our Earth...and destroyed in the Crisis?

[Super Monkey]

All Earths in the Muliverse were destroyed during crisis.

[dto]

Pre-Crisis, I've seen Metropolis AND Gotham City skylines graced with the unmistakeable Twin Towers.

Post-Crisis, it appears that the Twin Towers remained solely in New York City, until...   :cry:

Remember also that Post-Crisis Metropolis was literally transformed into a "City of Tomorrow" on January 1, 2000 by Brainiac 13.  Some of these buildings were actually levitating!  The city reverted back to its old appearance after Brainiac 13 was defeated in Superman #200.

As for Earth-Prime, Per Degaton took the looted Cuban nukes to Earth-X, where WWII was still being fought.  The missiles would have assured a final Nazi victory had not the JLA, JSA and Freedom Fighters not folied Per Degaton's plans.  When history was restored, the nuclear war on Earth-Prime "never happened".  

Superboy-Prime claims that Earth-Prime was destroyed in Crisis #10, though he was apparently still trapped in that temporal vortex that caught him in DCCP #87.  After the Battle at the Dawn of Time, the surviving worlds were merged and the Multiverse "never existed" -- ditto for Earth-Prime.  So technically it was spared from destruction TWICE, though removing it from all existence seems little improvement over annihilation via antimatter wall.

As for the current "Earth-Prime", there's an interesting post on the DC Message Boards regarding the recently rebooted Legion of Super-Heroes.  The Legionnaires draw their inspiration from 1,000-year-old DC COMIC BOOKS!  Is it possible that this Legion is actually based on Earth-Prime?   :shock:   If that's the case, if Superboy-Prime joins the Legion would he actually be "going home"?   :wink:

[Maximara]

Well, if you read the Crisis-crossover story introducing the Earth-Prime Superboy, Superman notices on our Earth(Prime) that NYC is sprawled out too far to where Gotham City and Metropolis should be.  The implication is that what is one city in our real world is somehow broken up into three cities on Earth-One.

In early stories when they had legal restrictions from using real locations, NYC couldn't be used  -- or any other real cities -- so that's why they used the fake names but used references suggesting what they really were.

Gotham was supposed to be the dark, seedy side of NYC.

Metropolis was supposed to be the more optimistic, positive side of it.

First I heard of there being a legal restrictions from using real locations. In fact Action #2 had Superman living in Cleveland, OH which hints that that city rather than NYC was the insperation for Metropolis.

[Super Monkey]

First I heard of there being a legal restrictions from using real locations. In fact Action #2 had Superman living in Cleveland, OH which hints that that city rather than NYC was the insperation for Metropolis.

Marvel owns the copyright for New York City  :wink:

[Johnny Nevada]

Well, if you read the Crisis-crossover story introducing the Earth-Prime Superboy, Superman notices on our Earth(Prime) that NYC is sprawled out too far to where Gotham City and Metropolis should be.  The implication is that what is one city in our real world is somehow broken up into three cities on Earth-One.

In early stories when they had legal restrictions from using real locations, NYC couldn't be used  -- or any other real cities -- so that's why they used the fake names but used references suggesting what they really were.

Gotham was supposed to be the dark, seedy side of NYC.

Metropolis was supposed to be the more optimistic, positive side of it.

When they started referencing the real NYC, they were forced to treat the three cities as separate locations.  But that Crisis story still sticks in my mind.

In some 70's and 80's stories, Metropolis and Gotham City were shown to be "twin cities" on opposite sides of some large bay, with New York as a third seperate city. Guessing the twin cities bit might've been done to make the World's Finest teamups easier, or someone figured there wasn't much space on the east coast to begin with as it is, or some writer grew up in some twin city area ;-)