by Kim Filchak
Who doesn’t love map porn? And maps of fictional places are even better, they give substance and boundaries to places that would otherwise exist as semi amorphous cartographic blobs in readers’ heads. Maps make fictional places real, they make already immersive fictional worlds even more so. Plus without maps of fictional locations just about every “Dungeons & Dragons” campaign is doomed to collapse in a heap of howling chaos. Basically maps are awesome. This was true from the first time J.R.R. Tolkien sketched up Middle Earth all the way to the map that once and for all defined the dimensions of one of the most iconic comic book cities of all time.
Gotham City, the Rotten Apple, home of Wayne Enterprises and Arkham Asylum, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy… wait. Wrong fandom, though the statement still applies. Gotham City is like what would happen if 1930’s Chicago, 1970’s New York, and 1990’s Detroit riddled through the body present day Manhattan like cancer. Gilt drenched decadence rubbing shoulders with the dirty brutal life on the street. A city where its citizens desperately try to hold some middle-class ground in face of exploitation and victimization by those with power, be that power gained via wealth, politics or crime. It’s a city where Nero fiddles at the Met Ball while a madman in clown makeup tries to burn the city to the ground on a seemingly weekly basis.
Recently Jimmy Stramp wrote for the Smithsonian about the origins of Gotham City, how it finally gained a definitive shape and the man who designed it. Though Gotham was born in 1940 right alongside Batman the city did not get its name until “Batman No 4.” and boy was that name perfect. It was a generic name for a city that could be any city, though its closest resemblance was to New York City. I could go on and on about Jungian archetypes but no one really wants that, so let me just say that the name Gotham is baseline definition iconic which is what makes it so easy to connect to. Bill Finger, co-creator of the caper crusader, has stated “We didn’t call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it.” Which makes sense, some kid growing up on the mean streets of Chicago will see their own reality reflected in the corrupt politicians and street violence. Naming the city Gotham made it that much easier to see Gotham City as your city.
For the longest time Gotham City’s geography was nebulous, growing and changing to fit the needs of the story any given writer and artist on the book was trying to tell. That all changed in 1998, when in preparation for the event “No Man’s Land” Batman writer Denny O’Neil decided that Gotham needed to finally have some defined boundaries before they gleefully destroyed it via earthquake. To do this he contacted Eliot R. Brown an illustrator who had worked for Marvel Comics as an “in-house architect and architectural render-er (and weapons designer and aerospace engineer).” The goal was to create an in house bible for those writing the various titles that would be affected by the events of the “No Man’s Land” arc. Brown had no formal cartographical training but what he created has been the landscape of Gotham City ever since.
The main hard and fast rule DC handed down was that Gotham had to be an island, so once Brown sat down with writers and got their wish lists it was time for a city to be born. Brown spoke with the Smithsonian about the experience.
“The DC Comics editors made it clear that Gotham City was an idealized version of Manhattan. Like most comic book constructs, it had to do a lot of things. It needed sophistication and a seamy side. A business district and fine residences. Entertainment, meat packing, garment district, docks and their dockside business. In short all of Manhattan and Brooklyn stuffed into a … well, a nice page layout.”
Browns work speaks for itself, a rough sketch becomes as city real enough to fool the alien explorers that discover the burnt out husk of our civilization a thousand years from now and who will wonder at they mysterious lost city of Gotham that exists in what remains of the historical record but of which exists no actual physical evidence remains.
Browns version of Gotham is still cannon to this day, not only in the comics but also in the various Batman video games and it was the map used in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy which is as great a legacy as anyone can get. I highly recommend reading the rest of Jimmy Stramps article over at Smithsonian, not only for an in depth look at the man who created the city but also all of the awesome additional maps.
