Why would people even live in Gotham?

[brettc1]

F*ck no.

Can anyone do something hilarious and count up the number of times Gotham has faced city-wide destruction/catastrophe in the New 52 alone (fictionally a one-to-two-year time frame)?

Off the top of my head, I can think of: Zero Year (to be fair, set at least five years before the rest), Medusa's attack in Batwoman, Leviathan's attack in Batman Inc., the end of Batman Eternal, and Joker's attack during "Endgame." That's four times in one to two years.

To say nothing of Snyder writing Joker as someone who casually murders entire apartment complexes and police stations. Or the Night of the Owls, during which half the city's officials were murdered.

Wasn't it one of the cites hit by a tidal wave in Throne of Atlantis?

Sure, not a Batman story, but would still have killed hundreds at least.

[Minerboh]

I am living in Athens. Close call.

[nepenthes]

Grant Morrison had the best answer to this question

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz. http://io9.com/5301435/grant-morriso...tman-and-robin

[Claude]

Wasn't it one of the cites hit by a tidal wave in Throne of Atlantis?

Sure, not a Batman story, but would still have killed hundreds at least.

Yep. Plus the whole city being taken over by Bane in Forever Evil/Arkham War.

[Frontier]

The Burnside portion of Gotham seems fairly safe at least. Aside from a few crazy, criminal, artists and daredevils. And the occasional tiger attack or two.

[Cipher]

Grant Morrison had the best answer to this question

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz. http://io9.com/5301435/grant-morriso...tman-and-robin

That absolutely needs to be reflected in the comics more often. A jazzy city full of pop crime makes sense. A dark, corrupted city full of constant, unpredictable, but inevitable mass murder does not.

Scott Snyder's actually one of the worst offenders here*, though it's not helped by all the catastrophe in the larger Bat-tapestry, if we're to take the shared-universe aspect seriously.

*Even when it isn't catastrophe, remember when in "Death of the Family," Batman shows up at the dam and Joker is like, "Hey, I just decided to drown this entire apartment complex"? What the hell. This is after murdering every cop in the police station with his bare hands, of course, and after murdering another entire group of officers with poison. It's amazing people can drive to work without being murdered by Scott Snyder's Joker.

[LoneNecromancer]

Grant Morrison had the best answer to this question

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz. http://io9.com/5301435/grant-morriso...tman-and-robin

Yep, this is my general go-to answer when people ask this question.

That absolutely needs to be reflected in the comics more often. A jazzy city full of pop crime makes sense. A dark, corrupted city full of constant, unpredictable, but inevitable mass murder does not.

Scott Snyder's actually one of the worst offenders here*, though it's not helped by all the catastrophe in the larger Bat-tapestry, if we're to take the shared-universe aspect seriously.

*Even when it isn't catastrophe, remember when in "Death of the Family," Batman shows up at the dam and Joker is like, "Hey, I just decided to drown this entire apartment complex"? What the hell. This is after murdering every cop in the police station with his bare hands, of course, and after murdering another entire group of officers with poison. It's amazing people can drive to work without being murdered by Scott Snyder's Joker.

Snyder likes playing up the "Gotham is alive and evil constantly throwing new things at Bruce to try and break him" kind of thing so yeah he doesn't really go with Morrison's interpretation.

[Nite-Wing]

Grant Morrison had the best answer to this question

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz. http://io9.com/5301435/grant-morriso...tman-and-robin

Its funny to see Morrison who always decries realism in comics complaining about the narrative in Batman not being realistic
So yeah Gotham isn't realistic its DC's Super Detroit/Baltimore okay I'm fine with that I wonder why Morrison suddenly isn't

[Cipher]

Snyder likes playing up the "Gotham is alive and evil constantly throwing new things at Bruce to try and break him" kind of thing so yeah he doesn't really go with Morrison's interpretation.

I get and like that, but asking the reader to take that seriously is kind of at odds with just how malevolent he's made it. It's no longer anything like a real, plausible city. Even as a vicious metaphor, a little more subtlety would have gone a long way there. Each of his arcs has involved a large portion of the city being murdered.

Like, make Gotham evil, and ever-changing. People just can't be getting murdered that much and see anything of value in living there.

[nepenthes]

Its funny to see Morrison who always decries realism in comics complaining about the narrative in Batman not being realistic
So yeah Gotham isn't realistic its DC's Super Detroit/Baltimore okay I'm fine with that I wonder why Morrison suddenly isn't

It's right there in the second half of that sentence - in-story logic

[Frontier]

I get and like that, but asking the reader to take that seriously is kind of at odds with just how malevolent he's made it. It's no longer anything like a real, plausible city. Even as a vicious metaphor, a little more subtlety would have gone a long way there. Each of his arcs has involved a large portion of the city being murdered.

Like, make Gotham evil, and ever-changing. People just can't be getting murdered that much and see anything of value in living there.

By Snyder's interpretation of Gotham, anyone who has actually survived all that mass-murder should be almost as strong and powerful as Batman is. So now I think of a lot of Gotham citizens as crazy survivalists who can handle a Joker attack just as effectively as Gordon or the rest of the BatFamily can .

[brettc1]

Grant Morrison had the best answer to this question

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz. http://io9.com/5301435/grant-morriso...tman-and-robin

I have to agree with this.

Right now, when people from Gotham get too depressed they book a relaxing gettaway in the Land of Mordor, where the shadows lie...

[brettc1]

Its funny to see Morrison who always decries realism in comics complaining about the narrative in Batman not being realistic
So yeah Gotham isn't realistic its DC's Super Detroit/Baltimore okay I'm fine with that I wonder why Morrison suddenly isn't

Because it is depressing to see Batman cast as the massive failure of the Justice League because his city is just a huge steaming pile of crap.

C'mon, the Flash could clean the place out in ten seconds and still have time to patrol Central City. Superman would only take longer because he is busy drolling over Wonder Woman, who has also had stories written about how she could take down every super villain in Bruce's rogues gallery.

Now I love Wonder Woman, but its a huge slap in the face to Batman have her waltzing into Gotham, turning it on its head, and then putting up a Wonder signal to show how much better she is.

Right now, Batman is the one fighting a desperate battle just to keep his city from descending into complete, death filled anarchy, while the rest of the heroes live in cities that look like utopia and wonder what the hell the problem is.

[LoneNecromancer]

Its funny to see Morrison who always decries realism in comics complaining about the narrative in Batman not being realistic
So yeah Gotham isn't realistic its DC's Super Detroit/Baltimore okay I'm fine with that I wonder why Morrison suddenly isn't

Morrison literally responds to that in the same quote, did you read the whole thing?

If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

And since when does he decry realism in comics? He's clearly not too keen on grimdark comics, sure, but one of his first major works was about what a modern superhero would really be like, so dunno where you're getting this "suddenly" thing from either.