In Marvel's comics, 60% of the Universe is within your daily commute to Manhattan, which is understandable given the studio's history. And I can understand it initially given the crime rates in the 60s and early 70s the greater city area had.
But those days are long over, and compared to that period where the heroes we know and love today where created one could be excused for thinking some sort of miracle has happened. Yes crime still exists, but in the 80s organized crimes started to leave New York for greener pastiers (white collar crime being the exception). I know that it's a comic book universe, and everyone will always say things like "Even though there are teams like the Fantastic Four and Avengers, they don't fight crime per say" or "for every hero there's 4 or 5 villains", which are true, but something to keep in mind is that big organizations that don't deal with street level problems tend to repel them just by their presents, the CIA being perfect examples (unless you want to get into possible CIA criminal activity, but this isn't about debating weather or not they are doing such things), and the groups like F4 and Avengers would be ones you wouldn't want to get to close to if you're planning something.
As for the villain to hero ratio, given how the heroes usually mentioned that are street level tend to only care about the one city or even just a part of it (almost always Hell's Kitchen), why would the villains even want to continue to operate in a city where 1) most heroes capable of fighting them who aren't to busy with something else live, and 2) the heroes they know of in the city always win, it makes me wonder why they bother to continue to operate in the city when there are other cities on the east coast in the US and Canada where whatever criminal activity they are doing can be done without worry from supers.
I like a street level superhero as much as the next guy, but why does it need to be set in a place where crime isn't the problem it used to be? The settings where compelling in their time because it was a reflection of reality, there was crime in real New York, there was crime in Marvel New York. Now the real problems of crime have moved elsewhere, like St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City, Atlanta, and a long list of other major cities that have far surpassed New York as crime centers for the US.
So I guess what it comes down to is: Why no more contemporary settings for street crime?
But those days are long over, and compared to that period where the heroes we know and love today where created one could be excused for thinking some sort of miracle has happened. Yes crime still exists, but in the 80s organized crimes started to leave New York for greener pastiers (white collar crime being the exception). I know that it's a comic book universe, and everyone will always say things like "Even though there are teams like the Fantastic Four and Avengers, they don't fight crime per say" or "for every hero there's 4 or 5 villains", which are true, but something to keep in mind is that big organizations that don't deal with street level problems tend to repel them just by their presents, the CIA being perfect examples (unless you want to get into possible CIA criminal activity, but this isn't about debating weather or not they are doing such things), and the groups like F4 and Avengers would be ones you wouldn't want to get to close to if you're planning something.
As for the villain to hero ratio, given how the heroes usually mentioned that are street level tend to only care about the one city or even just a part of it (almost always Hell's Kitchen), why would the villains even want to continue to operate in a city where 1) most heroes capable of fighting them who aren't to busy with something else live, and 2) the heroes they know of in the city always win, it makes me wonder why they bother to continue to operate in the city when there are other cities on the east coast in the US and Canada where whatever criminal activity they are doing can be done without worry from supers.
I like a street level superhero as much as the next guy, but why does it need to be set in a place where crime isn't the problem it used to be? The settings where compelling in their time because it was a reflection of reality, there was crime in real New York, there was crime in Marvel New York. Now the real problems of crime have moved elsewhere, like St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City, Atlanta, and a long list of other major cities that have far surpassed New York as crime centers for the US.
So I guess what it comes down to is: Why no more contemporary settings for street crime?
