The Urban setting in Superhero literature

Most of the responses to the texts of this course have focused on the role of socioeconomic structure in superhero comics. They have also visited the comparison of Batman and Superman as popular superhero characters in comics literature throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. From previous responses to the Batman narrative, it was established that Batman fights against a different class of criminals than was fought against by Superman. While Superman repeatedly uncovered sinister plots of wealthy upper class criminals, Batman fights the lower class punks who participate in petty crimes moreso than large-scale schemes. For both of these heroes, larger conflicts with supervillains are omitted from discussion. Based on these patterns, it can be argued that Batman protects the rights of the wealthy against criminal poverty while Superman stands up for the working class against the insensitive business owners who take advantage of their workers. The narratives of these heroes view socioeconomic problems from opposing perspectives.

The urban stage is the center of crime for the narratives of both of these superheroes. Superman's urban dystopia is the buzzing city of Metropolis, where popular fashion is often characterized by tight dresses and slick suits, and where classy cars are commonly driven down the streets in front of the Daily Planet. Batman's urban center is Gotham city, a perpetually nocturnal grounds of a lurking criminal underworld with shadows and creepy faces walking about. These urban depictions are filters for the readers' perception of the crime among social classes. For Superman's narrative, crime occurs in high class neighborhoods by mine owners and politicians, while Batman's criminal setting is on slum-like streets where dirty homeless drug addicts are the cause of pain and suffering in the urban locality. Even though the personalities of these criminals are socially opposite, their habitats are virtually identical in structure.

Batman's confrontation against lower class criminals is ultimately self-contradictory. In a simpler explanation, Batman is a wealthy one-percenter who repetitively beats down underclass criminals who are usually stealing in some petty fashion. In these confrontations, however, the narrative fails to explain the conditions in which the underclass criminals are living. Uricchio boldly argues in an article describing Gotham city: "...they deal with transgressions of the underclass but not with the conditions that give rise to these transgressions". This statement directly blames the upper class citizens of Gotham city for allowing the conditions of poverty to take advantage of innocent people who are coerced into amoral lifestyles of drug addiction and dishonest money-making. Batman, the millionaire/billionaire socialite with no real problems, can attack the source of crime by installing social justice to Gotham instead of fighting against the victims of poverty.