Empire City
The city of The Cloak has always been called Empire City, and his flagship comic book Empire City."Empire City" is Detroit, or Detroit as it could have been, and was named Empire City because it was founded at the intersection between three empires, American, British, and French. Of course, now I'm reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, about Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier, fictional creators of the fictional comic book hero* The Escapist. The Escapist's city is a version of New York called Empire City, complete with an Excelsior Building (Empire State Building) and Staue of Liberation (Statue of Liberty). So, despite the fact that I had never read Kavalier & Clay nor heard of The Escapist or Empire City before I created The Cloak and his Empire City, obviously I can no longer call The Cloak's universe Empire City.

* Obviously, all comic book heroes are fictional, from Superman to Spider-Man to Hellboy are fictional; so, why go out of my way to point out that The Escapist is fictional? Because Superman has appeared for sixty-six years in Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman, and many other periodicals; Spider-Man for forty-three years in The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Peter Parker: Spider-Man, and many others; and Hellboy for ten in various Hellboy and B.P.R.D. miniseries. Before the novel Kavalier & Clay, published in 2000, there had never been a single issue of the adventures of The Escapist in comic book form. Since then, Chabon has overseen a handfull of Escapist comic books, in the guise of lost works of Kavalier & Clay, but that's neither here nor there.

So, what the hell do I call Empire City now? I see two options: a) come up with a new imaginary name or b) just call it Detroit. There are good arguments for both. All the cities in this universe have imaginary names; highlights include Puritan Bay (Boston), Patriot City (Philadelphia), Neopolis (New York), Centropolis (Chicago), Aero City (San Francisco), Astropolis (Los Angeles), and Imperium (London). Some need work (Neopolis), some are genius (Aero City). On the other hand, the Detroit "D" looks beautiful when embroidered on a Tigers cap. The word Detroit is French for "the narrows," and in high school we pronounced it "De-tois." Detroit's flag, which deserves to be more famous, is a gorgeous combination of the French fleur-de-lis, the British royal lions, and Old Glory. A city at the intersection of three empires, American, British, and French. What I like about a fictional name is that it gives me the freedom to play with the city, to change its history, temperment, and geography. What I like about the real name is that it is the real name, and Detroit's a pretty sweet name.

The only good idea I've got so far is Palatine City. What can I say? I like Rome.

The Real World
And now I've got to go help my dad change the oil on The Last Angry Van. Not my brother, who drives it, but me. He's in A2, doing opera/school type stuff. I'm here, doing nothing. I'm not as pissed off or despondent as this post might seem to indicate. Those are just the facts of the matter.