Comic Book Talk

Reading Batman and Superman comics off and on my whole life I always pictured and assumed that Metropolis was a stand in for New York City and Gotham was Chicago and geographically about the same

I didn't know there were supposed to both be on the east Coast and so close to each other until the Batman v Superman movie (which I know isn't comic book canon, but until that movie I hadn't even considered they were that close)
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One of Stan Lee's many innovations as Marvel Comics editor-in-chief was setting the publisher's superhero stories in the real-world location of New York City. That greater sense of reality and interconnectivity within the comics helped create a sense of community among the fans (which Lee purposefully cultivated).

You can track the trend of creators and fans trying to fit superheroes into the "real world" back to Lee's marvelous NYC. Compare this to the older heroes of DC Comics, who had their adventures in places like Gotham City, Star City, etc. These characters had made up homes because they were so obviously figures who could never exist in our world; writing a superhero comic is like telling a fairy tale.

Note how Superman's home, Metropolis, is literally named for the word meaning "large city." But again, a lot of comic fans really like to know where the fabulistic cities of DC are, if only for internal consistency. That's especially true with the most famous one: Batman's Gotham City.

So, canonical answer: Gotham City is in the state of New Jersey. (Maybe there's a reason "The Penguin" takes so much from "The Sopranos.") In "The Amazing World of DC Comics" issue #14 (published in 1977), writer Mark Gruenwald writes an encyclopedic history of the Justice League. In the character bio section, Gruenwald explicitly labels Gotham City as being in New Jersey.

(Gruenwald also listed Metropolis as being in Delaware in this issue, which has likewise been accepted as canon.) New Jersey makes sufficient sense as the site of Gotham; it's not New York itself, but close enough. Since then, Gotham is usually, implicitly written as being in New Jersey — but not always.

In the animated "Young Justice," a map of the U.S. East Coast shows that Gotham is in southern Connecticut, around where Bridgeport, CT, is in real life.

Like New Jersey, Connecticut is an East Coast state that borders New York, so it fits the profile Gotham should have. As a born and raised Connecticut native, Batman and co. being fellow Nutmeggers obviously appealed to me. But that's the point, isn't it? Gotham City is supposed to be anywhere and nowhere, like Springfield in "The Simpsons," so that anyone can see their own hometown in it.

DC has resisted the assumption that Gotham City is a replacement for New York City; the real New York City has even appeared in several DC Comics, so it and Gotham exist simultaneously in the DC Universe. But if there's one real city Gotham allegorizes, it's NYC.

"Gotham" is a nickname for New York City, coined by writer Washington Irving in the 1800s. When Batman debuted in 1939, DC Comics (then National Comics) was also based in NYC, and so that's where Batman's credited creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane lived. In fact, "Detective Comics" #33 (the first depiction of Batman's often retold origin story) explicitly labeled his hometown as Manhattan. It was only a year into publication, in 1940's "Batman" #4, when Batman was relocated to the fictional Gotham City.............

https://www.slashfilm.com/1744940/where-batman-gotham-city-located-dc-comics/?zsource=msnsyndicated