No Surprises in GothamThis week’s Revenge of the 80s Kids Podcast is about the surprising success of the TV Series Gotham. The surprise (and indeed the success) derives from how well the city that provides ample belfries for housing the world’s most famous bat-man survives as an evocative fictional entity without it’s most famous resident being fully present.
To imagine an analogous situation that would probably not play as well, imagine a side-quel to Superman called Metropolis. There’s a skeleton structure of something there that one could make out of the premise, but it would be a lot of work to flesh it out. 
Gotham, on the other hand, does have one advantage. Batman’s gallery of foes is so rich and strange that they could carry a show all by themselves, and, indeed, they did. The series worked so well that it prompted the podcast episode companion to this article to earn the title “Batman is Screwed”. It is definitely not a stretch to argue that Gotham City lives and breathes and grows when the solution to every major crime no longer wears black rubber while driving his be-finned black sports car (or ATV). It gets to a point where you no longer want Batman to turn up, hence his screwedness. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this is the case. Sure, not every location becomes a character in the narrative it houses, but many do. Sometimes the town itself is deemed to be the only worthy title for a given ensemble series. With that in mind let’s quickly take a look around places you might not even want to visit, but only because you’re so familiar with their own unique character. Mega City One 
Let’s start with a simple one, and one that you may remember from my article from last week. Home to the Department of Justice and the ultra-violent dispensers of said justice, the Judges, Mega City One has a cornucopia of quirks and items of interest even when you’re not committing a crime (but, you’re always committing a crime, so…). As the Judge Dredd strip grew and evolved so the idea of using the daily adventures of the Judges to give a window into life in the Mega City became a good way of keeping the material fresh. It’s pretty clear that if you didn’t have to live in the Mega City then you probably wouldn’t do so by choice. Most people are poor, unemployed and miserable. You can’t go a single day without breaking one of the city’s laws and at any time you could irritate a judge and find yourself walled up in an iso-cube for a stretch. As such sufferers from Future Shock Syndrome AKA futsies are a common occurrence, people driven insane cracking under the pressure and overcrowding, rampage around public spaces killing everything that moves. People cooped up in high-rise apartment blocks develop feuds with neighbouring blocks that can result in block war. Robots go haywire, extreme sports go that step further and end up causing damage and destruction, every minute lived is some kind of bizarre achievement. Mega City One has been considered rich enough in potential to possibly be turned into a television series, although it seems that the whole city might have been recently relocated to the Development region of Hell. Not that this would make it any more uncomfortable for its citizens probably. Eureka 
The fictional American town of Eureka made its television debut in 2006 and established a solid demonstration of what could be done if you really committed to that ensemble vibe from the get go. In theory, the “main character” of Eureka was the town’s new sheriff, a former US Marshall called Jack Carter. But as with most ensemble efforts this was merely a way of knowing who came first after the “starring” caption in the show’s opening moments. Eureka boasted the latest in cutting-edge tech for everything, a cafe that could serve you any foodstuff free of charge, electric cars, it’s own cryptozoological park ranger, a mechanic who was also a rocket scientist and a character based on Marvel’s Tony Stark who mysteriously disappeared in 2008 never to return. As to the latter that wasn’t too surprising as events in Eureka go, because the downside of living in this technological utopia comes in the shape of regular reality breaking events that threaten to swallow the town whole. As much as this provided ample thrills and spills for an audience craving science-fantasy adventures, it must have been quite wearing for citizens of the town. Mos Eisley 
When tripadvisor tells you somewhere is a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” you’re sure to be able to pick up some bargain basement all-inclusive holidays there. Mos Eisley was possibly the thing that “did it” for most first time watchers of Star Wars back in the dim and distant 1970s. Sure, the spaceships and robots are cool, and check out that Darth Vader guy, but the visit to Mos Eisley is the first point at which the Star Wars universe took its place in a larger world. Later realisations of the far far away galaxy’s habitations, such as Bespin, Coruscant and the Ewok Village all, somehow, seem to reference Mos Eisley. Bespin’s clinical cloud platforms are smooth and shiny in exact proportion to how Mos Eisley is grubby and lived in. Coruscant is like the Mega-Mos Eisley. The Ewok Village shoots for a parochial mess of tree platforms that occupies the same world as the last Cantina before Jabba’s palace. In all of the Star Wars universe, it would seem, no location has as much raw, earthy, visceral character as Mos Eisley. It would seem a surprise that there hasn’t been a more concerted effort to bring an ensemble to the backwater hideaway of gangsters and rogues. It would be a surprise, except that the Star Wars universe keeps circling back round to dodgy desert locations, whether they be as crass as Jakku, as obvious as Jedha or just “another part of Tatooine”. Large expanses of the Star Wars galaxy are, it seems, desert, which isn’t too surprising but does beg the question of whether that first desert habitation we met really did get its due in the following decades. Springfield 
The home of the Simpsons is a good example of how an ensemble ecosystem can grow up organically. Characters and locations originally dreamed up in service of the world’s best known yellow family began to live a life beyond the Simpson’s sofa as the many many decades of renewed seasons marched inexorably on. Of course, it’s well known that the Simpsons isn’t any good any more, an observation so banal as to count as cliche. In this case, however, that may not be because the wider world around the Simpsons themselves wasn’t developed fully enough, maybe it’s precisely the reverse. The world of the Simpsons, Springfield and its citizenry is widely and comprehensively documented. There is no aspect of the Springfield life that has not been examined. Famously, the Simpsons has no continuity and has a sketchy relationship with the concept of “canon”. But, inevitably, events the audience know occurred in the past are often back-referenced for gags and there are Doctor Who like timey-wimey events that cannot be reversed or undone, such as the death of Mrs Flanders. In fact, this cruft of narrative rule by convention only serves to enhance the fictive resolution of Springfield as an “other” place. If you’re a big Simpsons fan you could make a call on what could be happening at any given moment during a Springfield day on a particular calendar date. You would also know whether these events would be sticky (persisting into the future Springfield narrative) or whether they would vanish at midnight ready for another “episode”. Maybe we’re all kind of done with watching Springfield because, for those that were once deeply involved with the place, it goes on existing inside of us. I know I am forever noting that such-and-such is a “perfectly cromulent word” and I think having that little bit of Springfield inside us embiggens us all. Ankh-Morpork 
To be fair to the Discworld’s, uh, most vigorous city, it has been presented in a wide variety of different lights in the course of the Discworld series. Pratchett’s key genius was being able to present a location or character consistently even if they just turned up for a few moments in an unrelated story. Sometimes in worlds shared across different stories, or groups of characters, the appearance of the crossover character, or location, seems a little out of place. We understand entirely that Spider-man can visit the Baxter Building and consult Reed Richards about some matter or other, but it doesn’t happen too often because it does feel kind of weird. I’m a massive Marvel fan, but even I have to acknowledge that Doctor Strange makes everyone else in whichever Marvel Universe feel weird because he’s just so counter to a lot of the other world-building that goes on there. This problem crosses super-hero movie universes, it’s the same feeling whenever you see Batman hanging out with the rest of the Justice League. Other single creator visions also have this problem, Stephen King’s fictional Castle Rock only appears to be a common setting by coincidence, the events of Needful Things and The Dead Zone don’t need to inhabit the same universe, they don’t even appear to really do so except the author tells you so. But Ankh-Morpork on the other hand? It’s always the same, you can always feel the filth clinging to you as you walk down its streets. You can always anticipate the cheery belligerence and heartfelt hostile but approachable demeanour of its average citizen as they pick your pocket upon passing you in the street. In Ankh-Morpork it doesn’t matter if you’re in the company of a wizard from Unseen University, a put upon member of the city’s Night Watch, or even stalking the shadows in the company of some major supernatural entity. The city is immutable, it will always be the same, feel the same whoever visits, even in the face of death itself. None of the places in this article need any key characters to be present in order to exist. They exist whether their protagonists are home or not. These are places that we can imagine living even though we may never meet the fictional creations for whom they were originally conceived. As our culture embraces more and more an experiential mode of entertainment through video games and other immersive forms of entertainment, we might find that our need for heroes is replaced by a need for living, breathing experiences and environments. Will our surprisesl emerge in these future locations from the massive and organic interactions of the city machine, and the heroes? Well, they can join us or not in the streets of these new worlds. Revenge of the 80s Kids Episode 135 this week is there to tell you that Batman is Screwed and this article only serves to expand upon why. If you want to get into the specifics in the case of the Dark Knight the cast can be streamed or downloaded at http://theeightieskids.blogspot.com where you can also find an extensive archive of content about movies and popular culture. You can also get news about the podcast and other projects at https://www.facebook.com/RevengeOfThe80sKids 
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