As alert reader Colin Jones recently noted, New York City is a pretty dangerous place to live if you happen to be part of the Marvel universe. At the very least, you should have a life preserver as part of your emergency kit--and keeping a scuba tank and fins close at hand wouldn't hurt, either. It's not often that writers have played the "flooding Manhattan" card, but you learn not to tempt fate when you're a New Yorker in a world of super-beings.
The Sub-Mariner seemed the natural choice in 1941 to flood the city out of spite--but let's take a look at the other few times when New York was poised to become another Atlantis.
First, it's never a good idea to make the mistake of insulting Gabriel, the "Air-Walker," as Reed Richards found out the hard way:
Unfortunately, you don't always have a herald of Galactus around to wave away massive flood damage. For instance, in the "Ultimate" universe, when Magneto damaged the Earth's magnetic poles, it was pretty much the apocalypse for New York (as well as other parts of the world). And thanks to the crossover "Ultimatum" event, we get to see two double-page renderings of the disaster:
Sort of makes one neighborhood in Stamford, Connecticut seem a little inconsequential by comparison, doesn't it?
Nor do our heroes have a whole lot of available time to plan a civil war on each other:
(I must say, Reed makes a good point.)
"Ultimatum" effectively ended the first wave of "Ultimate" titles--and while the concept was rebooted, it never really picked up steam again. New York, however, will be picking itself up and dusting itself off--not to mention wringing itself out--as long as the Atlantic Ocean sits there, just asking to be sent surging into the city streets.
This is nothing to do with comics but the first time I saw New York under water was in the movie "When Worlds Collide" (originally from 1951) which I saw when I was about nine and it was quite a startling sight to see the flooded New York with the skyscrapers sticking up out of the water.
ReplyDelete