Star City (comics) - Locations Through The Decades

Locations Through The Decades

Star City's location, like those of Metropolis, Gotham City, and other cities in the DC Universe, was uncertain for many years, with varying depictions over the decades. Several golden age stories depicted Green Arrow and Speedy fighting seafaring villains—the Angler, the Harbor Thief, and the Turtle, among others—implying the city was on a sea coast. Star City's location was given as near the Great Lakes in the 1960s and near Massachusetts Bay from the 1970s until the late 1980s. In one 1970s reference, it was stated that Star City was in Connecticut. Currently, northern California has been settled upon as its location, specifically in the coastal regions north of San Francisco Bay.

At least one map has been published in 1985 and was occasionally modified by Mayfair Games during the years that the company held the license for role-playing game adaptation rights for the DC Comics universe, detailing Star City's geographical layout. Though the Atlas placed Star City on California's Pacific Coast, north of San Francisco, the layout used for the city map resembled the geography of metropolitan Chicago, but reversed, so that it would be on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan: So the neighborhood of "East Gary" was approximately where the real Gary, Indiana, is, but it was on the Pacific Ocean instead of Lake Michigan.

In Birds of Prey # 119, Star City is depicted as being in the San Francisco Bay region, although the published map erroneously substitutes Star City for San Francisco. Also, the city of Platinum Flats, the home of the Birds at the time of publication, is described as "half an hour" away.