Why Gotham?

As a pre-warning this next post is a geek-fueled collision of the comic book world and realistic common sense…Mainly because I would totally dig superheroes cruising around the city but then reality steps in the way…

Why do people still live in Gotham? Seriously, this is a city that, not only is ripe with your everyday petty crime but, crazed individuals steal entire buildings here! This goes for Metropolis too! These things don’t happen in the country! (Although…Where do Super Villains go to unwind? Are there a series of resort destinations geared to their “special” needs? Or perhaps a cruise line with a “don’t ask” policy?) I mean, yeah you have some “special” people running around in spandex suits trying to stop the madness but to be honest they’re more than capable of claiming you as a “necessary” casualty. These are cities where you could be out, on your way to the corner market and suddenly you’re abducted from the sidewalk, taken to an abandoned amusement park, injected with some sort of poison and released back into society a gibbering, giggling meltdown of your former self with the hopes that someone will concoct an anti-venom in time to stop your brain from spraying out your ears.

And that’s something else….If these cities are the sparkling mega-destinations you’d think they would be, why is there so much available real estate? Every major city I’ve been to has had a complete lack of available warehouse space let alone acres and acres of abandoned amusement parks, carnival staging areas, discarded greenhouses, forgotten bioengineering labs, castles just on the edge of town and, well , empty apartment units. Have you noticed that every time Batman smashes through a window he lands in a run-down apartment complete with some sort of crates or other discarded packing material to land on and/or smash people into? Where did the apartment’s occupants go? And why didn’t they take their wooden packing crates with them? Were they too heavy?

What kind of recourse do you have IF a costumed avenger comes smashing through your living room while in the grasps of a shape shifting being from the farthest reaches of space? Can you bill them? Do they have a P.O. Box you can send your contractors estimates to? I know people have insurance but I’m not sure that the majority of policies cover acts of super-heroness….perhaps they do in these cities. That’d be a hell of a selling point if I lived there (…so you’re covered against fire, flood and homicidal rampages by super villains…now let’s talk life insurance…)

Perhaps the citizens of these cities have just become numb to these events… As they go about their day they casually avoid the aftermath of The Riddler’s latest spectacle or cross their fingers that Lex Luthor hasn’t shrunk the neighbor hood down again. (How odd must it be to leave work only to find yourself encased in a glass bottle on someone’s mantle? Come to think of it, how do the little delis keep producing little sandwiches?)

All I can say is that these metropolitan areas must have one hell of a welcoming committee….