ATD the norse/nunatak/serpent/odialesque thing

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Jill:

>So I also don't post much but I will so that ATD
>won't fizzle out. What I am most confused about is why they do pull it out,
>and what is the City that gets destroyed? I guess it's some city in Canada?
>I can't figure out what city it is even though I know it's a metaphor
>anyway. Can someone say exactly what city it is please? My eyeballs are red
>from paging around.

Thanks for posting, Jill. As Dave said, the city is almost certainly NYC, or 
at least some metaphorical city that is almost, but not quite congruent with 
NYC. I think the absence of easily recognizable landmarks in the description 
of the City's destruction is very intentional, but there are still a couple 
of things which point to NYC. We're told that the city is north of 
Washington (circumstantial evidence, at most), but here's the clincher: On 
p. 154 we're told that to commemorate this awful event, a great portal was 
erected:

"It being the grand era of arch-building in the City, usually of the 
triumphal sort, it was decided to put up, at some transition point into the 
forbidden relam, another great Portal, inscribed I AM THE WAY INTO THE 
DOLEFUL CITY -- DANTE"

At a later point in the book, the Chums of Chance visit New York City (and 
set up camp in Central Park). During one of their forays into the city on a 
dark and foggy night, they encounter this:

"They approached a memorial arch, gray and time-corroded, seeming to date 
from some ancient catastrophe, far older than the city. The mists parted 
long enough for Chick to read a legend on an entablature, I AM THE WAY INTO 
THE DOLEFUL CITY -- DANTE" (401)

While the city destroyed by the Figure may not be New York, exactly, it 
certainly touches that city on a number of points, with this arch as in 
important nodal point. I tend to think of the city destroyed by the Figure 
as either Metropolis or Gotham City: Both of these cities from DC's 
comicbook universe are clearly more or less identical with NYC, and both 
have been destroyed countless times without leaving any marks on their real 
counterpart.

/Tore

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