Saturday, June 18, 2005
Calvin City, the big city with little heroes
Here's a fictionopolis DC has forgotten: Calvin City.
That hand in the picture, by the way, belongs to Barry Allen, Science Geek, Bow-Tie Geek, Comic Book Geek, and one of the great superheroes of all time.
Calvin City is where Al Pratt, the Golden Age Atom, lived, studied, and worked (although, to this day, no one quite knows what Al did for a living; I like to picture him as a piano mover). Calvin College was there, but, as we learned in the Silver Age it was clearly eclipsed by its tonier rival...
Ivy University, a high-class institute in Ivy Town, a suburb of Calvin City. Yes, Ivy University, where Prof. Ray Palmer, the Silver Age Atom, teaches.
Yes, Julie Schwartz made no personal connections between Al Pratt and Ray Palmer (in those days, from Ray Palmer's perspective, Al Pratt would have been just a comic book character!). But he still gave them a geographic connetion by relating their cities to each other.
We know Ivy Town still exists, so certainly Calvin City does, too (unless it was obliterated by an atomic blast like the city of Fairfield, but that's a story for another day).
Okay, DC; bring back Calvin City! It needs a hero; who should start living there? It would have to be someone who could stand to have the Atom as guest star.
What hero should DC place in Calvin City, gang? Maybe Black Canary? Mr. Terrific? Dr. Mid-nite? Perhaps Zatanna?
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10 comments:
Power Girl would be perfect for Calvin City.
Oh, you think Power Girl's perfect for EVERYTHING!
Still, she really does need a place of her own. I picture her somewhere more Big Country, like Texas... Or in Horse Country.
OH! I know! Leesburg VA, where the angelic Supergirl used to be...
Why? Do they have a REALLY BIG JAIL CELL for him there?
Well, if we're talking about cities. I keep hoping that someone is going to use Vanity, the city from Grant Morrison and Mark Millar's short lived Aztek. The thing I liked most about the book was that the setting was a character in the book and the city was a fictional DC city like none other, having an effect on everyone that stepped foot inside it. Maybe now that Grant's back at DC he can take a crack at it.
Hush, e ! That's one the Fictionopolitan Comebacks I'll be posting on...!
"Calvin College was there, but, as we learned in the Silver Age it was clearly eclipsed by its tonier rival..."
For a second, I thought you were going to say "Rita College."
The pattern of the voting is perfectly clear:
the more fully realized and described the city is, the more votes it's getting.
Opal is the fictionopolis that had the most attention lavished on its creation. and effort was spent making it intrinsically interesting even WITHOUT its hero.
The other cities were designed to serve as stages for their heroes. Robinson wrote "Starman" as an excuse to create Opal City.
Calvin City should have Spiff and "Hobbes", a philosophical cousin of Tawky Tawny from Fawcett City.
And of course, Captain Napalm and the Thermonuclear League of Liberty.
Several members of my family actually went to Calvin College.
VERY cool!
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