How different would the MU be if it was anchored on West Coast culture?

[Hybrid]

The reason why the Marvel Universe revolves around the East Coast, and more specifically New York City, is simple: the company was founded and ran by East Coast natives, many from NYC or near it. The Trinity of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko itself is an example, with Stan and Jack being native New Yorkers and Steve permanently migrating there from Pennsylvania. The effect was "write what you know", hence why so many superheroes are from NYC, or set up their base there, and of course it made it easier to organically have them cross over with each other. I don't think there's a comic book company that embodies the East Coast culture more than Marvel. Really, it's hard to name an entertainment company in general that does, even DC which was also NYC-based until recently (they relocated to Burbank, CA in 2015) doesn't feel as defined by it.

This is actually part of the lore itself. California, and the West Coast as a whole, is very light on meta activity, compared to the East Coast being a hotbed of it. Runaways for example hinged on this idea, and this has been acknowledged many times.

But really, if Stan, Jack, Steve and the others grew up in California, then Marvel would've revolved around it instead. It's that simple. So what if Marvel instead revolved around the West, and Los Angeles was the core of their stories? What changes?

Thought this would be interesting.

[Riv86672]

Maybe the characters would be a little more spread out?

The Avengers (and by default characters like Cap and Tony) and Spidey would definitely be based in Los Angeles, the “Big City” as it were.

Daredevil seems more San Francisco to me.
I mean, he actually moved there once...:

^^^though I figure he’d have more love for it if he’d been born and raised there. Plus, San Fran’s Chinatown would offer him a chance to flex his MA side eventually. It’d be interesting to see Frank Miller do his classic DD stories set against a Chinese backdrop instead of Japanese.

Luke Cage in Compton? Luke Cage in Compton.

Dr. Strange might make his home in Venice.

The X-Mansion In South Bay/San Pedro, maybe.

The FF being in LA would also make sense, I guess, but Berkeley/Fresno/San Diego would be a nice fit too.

Hulk’s always been a wandering man, and started in New Mexico.

[Hybrid]

One interesting thing is that most superheroes are based in NYC, except the X-Men, which are traditionally based in nearby Westchester. What would be the Californian equivalent, assuming most are in Los Angeles? I guess the X-Men in Orange County makes sense.

[Riv86672]

^^^I chose South Bay/San Pedro for the X-Men, but Orange County has a nice ring to it.

[Zelena]

Other cities would be destroyed and not only New York…

I'm surprised that people are still willing to live in that city.

[Ferro]

the x-men's tenure in san francisco was quite great in my opinion, kinda miss it

[DrNewGod]

Spider-Man might work in San Francisco, but probably not LA. The supply of tall buildings to crawl on and swing from are too widely distributed.

[Riv86672]

the x-men's tenure in san francisco was quite great in my opinion, kinda miss it

I’d forgotten about that.

Spider-Man might work in San Francisco, but probably not LA. The supply of tall buildings to crawl on and swing from are too widely distributed.

He’d have gotten more use out of the Spider-mobile!

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think the West Coast is mainly defined by space and distance. So it's a place with a lot of cars, freeways, and traffic. That's different from the East Coast and NYC where you have more foot traffic and congested places of living. So the superhero story in terms of urbanity is more conducive to the East Coast than the West Coast. The idea of a dude in a city covering a corner by jumping over roofs and so on doesn't make too much sense in a place like Los Angeles where it's so many suburbs spaced wide.

It does make more sense in San Francisco, though again the hilly topography of that city makes traversal quite hard and again you have the issue of only a few areas having buildings clustered together. Mostly in Downtown from Powell Street upwards while from West Portal and beyond it's smaller, and the East side of the city, around Dogpatch is mostly warehouses.

In general West Coast culture doesn't lend well to the big superhero adventure setting. Sure there are exceptions and stories are set there but those are exceptions, tourist trip episodes, and not really representative.

IF the Marvel Universe were centered around the West Coast, I think you could see stuff like
-- Each superhero having their own city or community or district. I think the wide spaces there would justify this. So one hero will be based in Sacramento say, another in San Francisco, another in Oakland, and still others in San Diego, while Los Angeles will have a few big ones.
-- Spider-Man would have to have a Spider-Mobile to travel around. In fact the Dune Buggy look of the Spider-Mobile is already more of a West Coast thing than an East Coast thing.
-- The Bradbury Buidling in Los Angeles would be featured more often in stories and will be the office spaces for Daredevil and Jessica Jones, since it's very noir.

[mathew101281]

I’d forgotten about that.


He’d have gotten more use out of the Spider-mobile!

Ha! With our traffic issue’s hardly.

In LA, flying heroes and heroes with other kinds of motion based powers would be prominent. Northwest cities like Seattle and Portland would have more variation.

[Anthony W]

This is actually part of the lore itself. California, and the West Coast as a whole, is very light on meta activity, compared to the East Coast being a hotbed of it.

No way, that is actually part of the lore? That is the perfect storm of lazy, condescending and stupid. It shows you just how far the writers will go to keep leaning on the NYC crutch. I can see it being a hassle in the old days when research was more time consuming. Now writers have the internet. Even if they don't live in the city they can still learn enough to do a reasonable take on the city. It's not like someone is going to go out of their way to call them out.

When push comes to shove the only two heroes that actually need to be in New York is Spider-Man and maybe Daredevil. Everyone else can be moved to other cities and you won't miss a beat.

[Riv86672]

IF the Marvel Universe were centered around the West Coast, I think you could see stuff like
-- Each superhero having their own city or community or district. I think the wide spaces there would justify this. So one hero will be based in Sacramento say, another in San Francisco, another in Oakland, and still others in San Diego, while Los Angeles will have a few big ones. --

^^^since that was my hypothesis, I totally agree!

-- Spider-Man would have to have a Spider-Mobile to travel around. In fact the Dune Buggy look of the Spider-Mobile is already more of a West Coast thing than an East Coast thing.
--

Ha! With our traffic issue’s hardly.

^^^the Spider-mobile was the ultimate ATV. It could swing between buildings and crawl up surfaces.
PPL would be sooo jealous as it went by!

[Maine Starfish]

It’s definitely an interesting idea/question. Both in considering long established characters like spidey, cap, iron man etc. And also from the standpoint that it most likely would have also lead to a lot of entirely different characters from the start.

I definitely like the idea of daredevil in San Francisco. JJ and Cage probably would fit well with that city as well.

[danielsan52]

Spider-Woman would have been this for Marvel West:

80C0E76F-AE1B-4705-9E73-9810ABDD1B03.jpg

[H-E-D]

West Coast, Best Coast.