Special effects and supermen in the 20th century, as advanced technologies have proliferated, popular culture has turned the fear of instability into the thrill of topsy-turvydown, often by presenting images and experiences of weightless escape from controlled space. The challenge of writing about comic books, relatively little academic writing to draw upon, inaccessibility of the actual objects, hard on how to address the reality of superheroes and DC comics realworlds where "fictional super heroes influence all too human people to attempt superhuman things". From a pure theory perspective though the vehicle of the superhero we can recover the city as new and shifting ground and urbanism was defined as a way of life by socialist Louis Wirth in 1938 this is the same year that superman first gained an appearance. They are surprisingly proper guides to these cities of change: they are invulnerable yet resilient and metamorphic and post modern category.
The phenomenology of the super heroes cities. With the 20c came new concentrations of information a rapid circulation of information and new modes of perception/social definition. Postmodern conception of uncentered city. The city as site of the familiar/strange, the sunlit/shadowed, the planned/the chaotic, the sublime and the uncanny. The superheroes inherit and embody many of these paradoxical tropes. The experience of the city and the comic books is less one of static order than dynamic negotiation, comics are rarely panelled in a regular fashion. New York is a city of intense circulation as the streets keep moving and you've got to love the movement. If your going to engage with the city you have to love the movement and to be a superhero you've got to be able to keep up with the movement and be ahead of it. Superhero narratives are sagas of propulsion and movement through the city. Every superhero has enhanced powers of motion either natural or technological.
The city is made with lots of different layers, architectural surfaces are broken down during battles, chases and confrontations. Use of architectural schematic plans to produce orderly, but nevertheless fantastic spaces.
