Boom! Wham! Pow! The ComiQuad is a column dedicated to the spandex-laden world of comics and superheroes. It goes up each Wednesday and will alternate between comic book reviews and other comic book news. Reviews shall try to be spoiler-free. And it’s back! Zam!
We all know about Gotham City. It’s the fictional city equivalent to those awkward, dark middle school years that no one likes to talk about. Evanescence CDs, the color black, and random notebooks labeled “Poetry.” It’s a city of eternal (rainy) night and crazy people who dress up as bats. A city of biannual genocide and prisons that model themselves after revolving doors. Why anyone lives there is beyond me. It’s likely set somewhere in New Jersey.
Gotham City, however, is not the only city to house some pretty famous superheroes. In fact, our very own Boston is home (and more) to many of comics’ biggest names.
Carol Danvers (of Marvel Comics)
Currently the star of her very own critically acclaimed series, Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Binary, Warbird, and Captain Whizbang) is a brash, strong, confident, punchy (both in attitude and action) lady who is as stubborn as any human can be. All which made Boston her only logical home.
Growing up, she lived with her mother, father, and two younger brothers in a Boston home during the school year and in a summer home at Cape Cod after the school year. When the family was hit by economic woes, her father decided that family finances would send younger brother Steve to college and not Carol, the older child with better grades.
So she joined the Air Force and left her home in Boston.
But that doesn’t mean she never goes back.
In last year’s Avenging Spider-Man #9 and #10, Carol (alongside Spider-Man Peter Parker) fought some villainy down in Carol’s old stomping grounds. Images included Spider-Man in Fenway and Carol flying through the Zakim Bridge.
Emma Frost (of Marvel Comics)
Emma Frost, recently portrayed by January Jones in the film X-Men: First Class, has the superpowers everyone would expect a high society girl to have: the ability to read people’s minds, the ability to turn into a diamond, and the ability to effectively rock white clothing after Labor Day.
It turns out that not only was “the White Queen” once a high society girl, she was once a high society girl from Boston.
Born into a family whose sole profession was inheriting and making money from their centuries’ old mercantile lineage, Emma quickly learned that a rich family, and a kind and emotionally stable family were very rarely one in the same thing.
Her father, Winston (of course that’s rich dude’s name) Frost, had her brother and only friend, Christian Frost, committed to a mental institution when Christian admitted he was gay. He also had Christian’s boyfriend deported from the country. She also had a strained relationship with sociopathic eldest sister Adrienne (the sister who would later try to kill Emma’s students at the Massachusetts Academy).
Unlike Carol, when Emma left Boston, she had little reason to go back.
Wonder Woman (of DC Comics)
Alright, so Wonder Woman was not born in Boston. Even the biggest fans of the city would not exactly call Boston and Paradise Island one and the same. But, given DC’s penchant for basing characters in fictional cities, it’s amazing to see that, for most of Diana’s original continuity, she called Boston her non-Amazonian home.
Immediately after leaving Themyscira (Paradise Island) on her journey to “the world of man,” Diana landed in Boston. It is there that she met her supporting cast, including perennial love interest Steve Trevor, best friend Etta Candy, and a Harvard professor who taught her English.
For many years, Boston was her base of operations. In her time here, she ended gang wars between crime families, stopped her arch-nemesis Cheetah, and also fought the Joker (after he got sick of Gotham City for a while).
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, even the Joker has been to Boston.
The most fascinating factoid about her time in Boston, however, has more to do with the life of an average college student than it does with the life of Batman. For a short period of time, Diana worked at a fast food restaurant: Taco Whiz.
Think of that when you order food from the soon-to-be-built Taco Bell on campus next year. That disgruntled college student you just yelled at for not giving you enough salsa? She might be an Amazonian princess ready to kick your butt to the curb.
(Thanks to Sue at DCWomenKickingAss for the helping me with this week’s ComiQuad blog post!)
Emma Frost and WW are two of my favorite women in comics. I’m happy to see them on this (unfortunately short) list. I’ve heard the new Captain Marvel run is pretty good, too.
I wonder if you know also that Arkham Asylum was based (indirectly, though I’m unsure if unintentionally) on the Danvers State Insane Asylum north of Boston. A great piece of trivia for Mass-based DC fans!
I had no idea about the Arkham Asylum – Danvers, MA connection! That’s extraordinarily fascinating and moderately terrifying. I most definitely need to go there at some point; it could make for a great ComiQuad piece.
When researching for this piece, I did find other heroes from Boston, but they were people I had never remotely heard of before except Cloak from Cloak and Dagger.
But at least the one’s we have are pretty dang awesome 🙂
*ones
To clarify, Arkham Asylum is based on the sanatorium in the fictional town of Arkham, MA from a Lovecraft story, which, in turn, was based on Danvers, MA.