My comic is set in a fictional city. I love the idea of all the things that could be in and be going on in Metropolis or Gotham, for example. It's interesting to lock in geographic details and local color which might omit the possibilities of others. Honestly, I think it's cool that even the Question had his own (Hub) city. It's just a topic that I have fun with so I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion. What are the ins and out of fictional cities either in your own/others web-comics or popular print?

Where would you visit in Gotham?

Are fictional cities still pretty much easy plot devices or are they becoming rather well defined?

My comic is set in a fictional city called Saint Loraine. I like how it's somewhat unclear what country it's supposed to be in, I like readers to look at it and decide for themselves. I also like to invent the history, culture, and current events. I enjoy borrowing bits and pieces from parts of history of real cities and pattern buildings after real ones that I've seen.
The challenge is to keep setting details in the background yet not make them inconsequential. Because the story's meant to be about the characters and their lives, no so much about the setting. At the same time I don't want the setting to seem irrelevant if that's the right word.

parkbenchbook
Are fictional cities still pretty much easy plot devices or are they becoming rather well defined?

My character lives in Atlanta, partly because I thought it interesting when Stan Lee put all his heroes in NYC, partly because I'm not really involving her in any public appearances or interfering with politicians. (In her reality, she's just---at best--a rumor, and most people haven't heard of her).

However, I have no real PROBLEMS with fictional cities---just thought it wasn't necessary with my particular comic.
Where would I visit in Gotham? Does Selina Kyle's bedroom count? (Of course, she'd then proceed to break my arms and legs, but still...) ---Al

Creating your own city can be a good exercise for creativity and make the story better, but it can be quite unnecessary if the city has no relevance in the plot. I'll take one of my comics as an example. Freakenburg (yep, my comic has the name of the town) couldn't take place in another city, 'cause the city itself will be almost another character. But if your comic just needs a standard city, why should you bother creating lots of stuff?
Well... That's just my opinion, I'll return to this topic to see other people's posts.

My comic is placed in an abandoned house:P More specifically, a Dust Colony. Technically that is a city... they've made buildings and everything. To be honest without it I would have no comic. But I can see Freakenburger's point... If your characters aren't having anything to do in the city, why bother making it up?

Let me say for the record that I've only ever visited major cities in my lifetime. I've never stayed in one more than three weeks or so. Maybe it's because I can fill out all the fascinating details of a place I'd like to see exist? Metropolis is shinier and cleaner than Gotham. I grew up reading about New York in Marvel comics but didn't ever go there until I was twelve or so.

What about the major events that happen in the stories set in these fictional cities? What traces do we have of the long lasting effects? I was reading a trade paperback comic once where there are characters on a rooftop and it's kind of dark and they mention how after "Dr. Twilight" died it had been shady. Unfortunately, I looked back but can't figure out what title it was. Anyway, underneath the whole cape story there are millions of other individuals right? What if it's somewhere in Southern California but they live under a sky of constant in-between? Just that one city...

Shades , my main comic here at DD, is set in the UK - mostly in London, which just about qualifies as a major city ( :) ), although it's hardly fictional!

However, one of my other comics (The Spires [brokenvoice.co.uk]) is set in an entirely fictitious city. It certainly wasn't an "easy plot device" since building everything from scratch means you have to think about not only the architecture but also the people who might populate it and the interactions between the different social layers within the society.

As for Gotham ... I wouldn't go there. Not ever!

Wyrden (the main city) in Hestonia is a massive three-tiered steampunk creation that's fully mapped out elsewhere. The city started life as a focal point for short stories, rather like Sanctuary or Lankhmar. Then I realised that I could take it further and wrote a full history and world behind the city, expanding on numerous things rather like DAJB has done with Spires.

I've got numerous cities since I love designing things (it's mostly my job) from fantasy to futuristic. I'm working on a completely system-less city for pen&paper rpgs at the moment, can't say too much about it though since it's under NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement).

As for Gotham, well, I'd like to sneak into the Batcave (of course)

My current setting is very vague - simply because it started out that way, and eighty+ pages in, it's quite hard to retcon an actual coherency into it. I try to keep some things clear, and I've got a vague idea of how large the town is in terms of population, but it's fuzzy around the edges even for me.

I do love designing fictional cities, though - and worldbuilding in general. I do have a problem doing the maps of the cities - I can draw and all that, but my maps always come out looking like I have no idea what I'm doing - but I usually have a pretty good idea of what they look like, if only in my head. If you put a lot of time into it, the city can almost become a character in itself, which helps set the tone for the story, and the more you know about it, the easier it is to write/draw it.

UGH! How can you even contemplate something so fiendishly complicated? o_O

Just doing about two or three pages showing Tunis (and a fictional depiction at that) was brain-meltingly hard for me. I'm even crap at the spatial relationships on Pinky's battleship, and even within single rooms, let alone an entire city full of such relationships...

...the horror... the horror.

Hehe, like Konrad, I prefer my stories set in the middle of the ocean or in some African wilderness. -_-

ozoneocean
UGH! How can you even contemplate something so fiendishly complicated? o_O

I guess I'm just weird, but I've always loved worldbuilding. :) I might be crap at drawing visually pleasing maps, but I love figuring out the nitty-gritty bits and construct all of these unreal places - other people have hobbies, I build fictional worlds.

Of course, it's not just the maps/layout of the place; it's the whole look of it, the theme and the society and the people that live within it, and oooh, fictional religions, fairy tales and traditions and all that is fascinating too.

*skulks off to worldbuild*

Hm! Well, Due East is based in Austin, Texas (which is a real city) but Off Hours starts out at a luxury resort in a no-name town that one of our actors (C.K. who plays Desmond in Better Luck Next Time) nicknamed "Godknowswhere, Pennsylvania." Other than that, we literally have not named the town...so I think that's kind of cool. B)

In my past superhero comics, I had the heroes based in Los Angeles, but they traveled to worlds I completely made up. It can be fun, if a little tedious.

Din Krakatau happens in a fictional town. Where it is exactly, it'll be explained in a different comic, assuming I ever get to that one :)

One of my future titles is supposed to happen in real locations, another one in locations based on real places, but vastly different as it happens in an alternative timeline (quite different from ours), then there's one with a fictional city, another one with a city suspended on a large "floating island", and then there will be one with a city that's the size of our galaxy... the rest is mostly fantasy so of course it's fictional cities, assuming it happens there and not somewhere in wilderness. :)

(will take me years to write and draw all of this, lol)

Dasien lives in scenic Stratford City (not to be confused with the real life city in Connecticut), a fictional metropolis on a bay. Stratford City is basically the midwest equivelant of Archie's Riverdale. I've toyed with the idea of putting the city on the bay of a sixth Great lake, possibly called Lake Anterior.

Putrid Meat is set in a fictional city cuase 1, i dont know enough about any city outside of chicago to base a story off of it, and secondly, if i did base it off a real city, i'd probably get too caught up in the stereotypes of that city. the vision in had in mind for Putrid Meat to take place was completely it's own idea,although it realy hasnt explored to much of it yet. so anyways, that's why i made Septica city. fuck, doesnt that sound a lot more fitting anyways then say, new york, or las angeles?

My comic is set in a city that I have never given a name to. I kinda figure it is east coast USA in a temperate latitude (snowy winters, hot summers). There's a beach fairly nearby and a river running through the city (near industrial and abandoned/crime areas). I always describe it as a fairly large city in terms of population and expanse but not a skyscraper city or tourist location. I think of it as similar to a place like Atlanta. -- I wanted a good sized city to allow for a wider range of plotlines and to let there be plenty of opportunity for "strangers" and "chance encounters." Plus a major aspect of my story is organized crime, which fits better in an urban setting.

It is similar in layout to the town where I live (one of the most populated "cities" in West Virginia ;) ), just an enlarged and enhanced version of it. When I introduce locations/houses/businesses in my story, I make note of them and keep in mind how far and what direction things are from each other. (Sometimes, I place them related to specific locations in my real town to help me remember.)


(Btw, I've never lived in an urban area. It's novel enough that I now live in a place with buses and taxis -- but definitely not a "city" but world standards. I enjoy visiting big cities. I'm most familiar with Toronto and Atlanta.)

My comic takes place in New Breckenshire, a picture-esque New England suburb suffering from the Sunnydale syndrome. (Weird stuff happens and people tend not to notice/care.) You really don't see much of the town, because the characters are usually indoors. It definitely has a medium sized town vibe about it. There are around 29027 people, four churches, three graveyards, basic public elementry/middle/high schools. It's got a beach and movie theater and a bowling alley. If it weren't for all the weird crap that happens there, it would be a nice place to live.

Bulletproof is set in a fictional city. Personally, when I see places I'm actually familiar with portrayed poorly or just flat-out wrong, it annoys the hell out of me, and since I live in Europe, I didn't want to set it in some essentially fictional representation of, say, NYC, that has very little to do with the real place - even though I have actually been to NYC before, there's no way I could portray it accurately enough, so I decided not to try. That was the original impetus, and once I started developing the concept more, and the longer I work on it now, I'm glad it's set in a fictional town (and in the near future) because it allows me to do all kinds of things that would ruin whatever realism there would be if it was meant to take place in a "real" city.

Actually fleshing out Junction City itself and representing it more accurately/precisely is one of my goals for the immediate future. I feel like I really haven't done anywhere near enough of that yet.

Both of my comics' settings are based on real life cities but I could twist and tweek them a bit.

BLTR's setting is in Boston but I haven't specified exactly where.

The Burnhams' setting is in Seattle but it's somewhat in the near future 2009 but we could do couple of madness to tweek the time era plus there will be several events that'll happen in the city.