3. National City in Supergirl

Supergirl’s National City is just as much of an epicenter for journalism as New York City is to the real world. Despite Earth 38’s technology that advances far beyond that of regular old human Earth, National City thrives on journalism and it’s the main source of news for people in the city. The series, previously on CBS, kicks off with Kara Danvers watching the news to see her human sister crashing on a plane, which led to the birth of Supergirl, and Kara accepting her powers to help the people of National City.

National City was created for the show and doesn’t exist anywhere in the Supergirl comics but it’s taken on a life of its own and stands strong amongst other comic cities like Star City and Central City. The importance of journalism isn’t just rooted in Kara, who was an assistant turned reporter at CatCo Worldwide Media: the villains of the show have frequently targeted CatCo as a threat.

Yellow Kid Cartoon “War Scare in Hogan’s Alley,” March 15, 1896 by Richard F. Outcault via Wikimedia Commons User Infrogmation.

Interestingly, comic books have been rooted in New York City journalism since the 1890’s when the feud between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer led to the birth to the modern comic strip. Richard Outcault, who worked for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, created the newspaper’s Sunday funny strip called The World’s Funny Side, which featured a character known as the Yellow Kid in 1895. William Randolph Hearst “borrowed” the character and featured it heavily in the journal’s American Humorist column. In addition to sparking an interest in comics, the strips became a vital component of the feud between the two newspapers and sparked the gimmicky, all-caps headlines and sensational writing called Yellow Journalism that became a fixture in journalism and comics at the time.

The ongoing feud between CatCo Worldwide Media and The Daily Planet (Superman’s newspaper) is mentioned several times throughout the series and is reminiscent of the historical feud between Hearst and Pulitzer. Cat Grant, CatCo’s creator, strived to get faster and more hard-hitting headlines than The Planet, and groomed Supergirl to be the superhero of CatCo much like Superman is to The Planet.