The first appearance of the iconic Daily Planet building in the “The Arctic Giant,” the fourth episode of the Superman cartoon created by Fleischer Studios. Original airdate: February 26, 1942
This is an interesting article from Design Decoded:
Though well known today, the Daily Planet building wasn’t always so critical to the Superman mythos. In fact, when the Man of Steel made his 1938 debut in the page of Action Comics #1 , it didn’t exist at all. Back then, Clark Kent worked for the The Daily Star , in a building of no particular architectural significance because, well, there was no significant architecture in those early comics. The buildings were all drawn as basic, generic backdrops with little distinguishing features that did little more than indicate some abstract idea of “city”.
Clark Kent working at The Daily Star in Action Comics #1. Rest assured, Superman puts a stop to the wife-beating mentioned in the final panel. (image: Art by Joe Shuster, via Comic Book Resources)
As noted by Brian Cronin, author of Was Superman a Spy ? and the blog Comic Book Legends Revealed , Kent’s byline didn’t officially appear under the masthead of a paper called The Daily Planet until the 1940 Superman radio show, which, due to the nature of the medium, obviously couldn’t go into great detail about the building. That same year, The Daily Star became The Daily Planet.
But the lack of any identifiable architecture in these early representations of the Planet hasn’t stopped readers from speculating on the architectural origin of the most famous fictitious edifices in funnybooks. Unsurprisingly, Cleveland lays claim to the original Daily Planet. But so too does Toronto. And a strong case can be made for New York. So what was the true inspiration behind the iconic Daily Planet building?
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A small gallery of Metropolis maps. New Troy is the main island of Metropolis and one of the six boroughs in the city. It represents the hub of Metropolis’ central business district and is the equivalent to New York City’s Manhattan.
]]>The exact location of Metropolis in the United States has never been canonically established. Although Superman creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel lived in Cleveland, they never established a canonical hometown for their iconic creation. During the Silver Age era, Metropolis was firmly established as a coastal city on the Eastern seaboard, but it was never established which U.S. State it was located in. On January 21, 1972, DC Comics declared Metropolis, Illinois as the “Hometown of Superman”.
I always thought that Gotham was near New York and Metropolis was in Chicago, but that’s not true at all. In fact, the two cities might be right across the bay from one another. So if Gotham is in New Jersey, then that makes Metropolis in Delaware.
That’s right, Delaware .
The Atlas of the DC Universe , created in 1990 for a Role-playing Game, included a rare map of the American in DC Comics. On the East Coast of this map were Gotham and (much to my surprise) Metropolis. Take a look:
More recent comics have stated that Metropolis is actually in New York State. Personally, I’ve always loved this quote attributed to Frank Miller: “Metropolis is New York in the daytime; Gotham City is New York at night.”
In the television series Smallville, Metropolis is in the same state as Smallville, Clark Kent’s hometown. That’s right, it’s Kansas – which, next to Chicago, seems to make sense. Clark Kent is from the Midwest and it makes sense that he would move to a Midwestern City.
For a full map of DC America, check out The Secret Geography of the DC Universe: A Really Big Map over at iFanboy.
[some of the above content via Batman wiki ]
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