On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Can anyone please upload a scan of the "Ask the Answer Man" section of the "Daily Planet" page from Detective Comics #470 (June 1977)?

There was this on Wired.

Not the first time it's been done. The newspaper comics of the 1970's did it. So we know where Zack Snyder's getting some of his inspiration.

I just wish they'd stick with Eliot Brown's map in toto for Gotham, like they decided to stick with John Byrne's Six Boroughs for Metropolis in Man of Steel. As it is, we've seen from photos taken at location shoot sites that they cribbed the location names from that map, and are using a modified map of Detroit for Gotham to plant those names on.

I see DC Comics-based movies are continuing that tradition.

Evidence herein, from location shooting for Man of Steel:

http://www.supermanhomepage.com/images/man-of-steel-movie2/110914-taxi1.html

At least the motto fits.

These search terms have come up empty for me:

• Matt Hatton
• Beth Garswood
• graphic design
• Superman Returns

I know those two names are connected with that discipline and that movie through The Art of Superman Returns by Daniel Wallace. They are credited with the post-New Krypton map of Earth "if Lex Luthor gets his way" in that book. I'd like to find out if they were responsible for other maps commissioned for use on-screen in that same film.

Are they still working in the field?

78 million sentients.

That's the population of Metropolis during the Legion's first year, according to Brainiac 5. "78 million sentient inhabitants in the urban zone before you reach the greenbelt" being the exact phrasing as recorded in Adventure # 515.

It's been three or four months since that issue saw print, but that figure has started to nag at me a little. So, I did a little digging. I'll do it again here, just to make sure that the "show your work" crowd is working from the same playbook.

Here's a map of 30th Century Metropolis as sanctioned by Legion writer past and present Paul Levitz, and modified for re-use back in Who's Who in the LSH # 6, circa 1988:



Using 2009 estimates from the US census people as provided by Wikipedia...

Connecticut: 3,518,288
Rhode Island: 1,053,209
Massachussetts: 6,593,587

New York and New Jersey get a little tricky here, seeing as not all of each of those two states gets incorporated into the boundaries of Legion Era Metropolis...so we're going to put that off to "Step Two", which may involve a little Google Earth, a little Photoshop...

Some of you may have already seen the new Metropolis map that showed up a week or two ago in the pages of Superman Secret Files 2009. I was looking forward to seeing how whomever was contracted to do the artwork - I thought probably Eliot Brown would be hired for the job at the time, as he'd done a couple of works on the subject for previous Secret Files installments - would embellish the existing "Six Boroughs" map established by John Byrne and company back in 1986, and revealed to the public at large in 1988 via Mayfair Games' second edition starter kit for the DC Heroes Role-Playing Game.

Turns out that I was a little off on my expectations.
( Read more... )

The latest version of Legion of Super-Heroes mentioned something interesting in passing in a recent issue written by Mark Waid: their version of 31st Century Metropolis runs across nearly the entire North American Atlantic seaboard.

Question: how chilling(or not) do you find the implications of a single city running all the way from Cape Breton to Key West?

Yours, whilst still wishing I'd gotten that Daily Planet Guide to the Legion Worlds project with West End Games past the outline stage,

Dwight