Comics Catacombs

Chicago, Capital of the Great Lakes. New York City may be Gotham, but Chicago is Metropolis. A spider web of streets stretching out along the shore of Lake Michigan. A mix of old world hand craftsmanship and new world industrialization. Art Deco Roman goddesses perch atop skyscrapers while the serpentine steel L shuttles the cities inhabitants along. If you allow the hyperbole, the Superman of this Metropolis is Barack Obama. (sadly his name is still not in the spellchecker dictionary.)

So much is going on the city right now that I am having a hard time getting a full grasp of things. While, Obama continues to appoint cabinet members and iron out the plans to try and right the listing ship that is our country; the governor is being charged with trying to sell Obama's vacant US Senate seat.

In all of this the Chicagoans I have met seem unsurprised. The city and state have a history of corrupt government. Most of the people I have spoken to only shrug their shoulders at the most recent charges of corruption, it is not so much apathy as it is concern for the larger looming economic troubles.

Across town the Republic Windows and Doors Company is about to shutter its local factory and move operations further inland to Iowa. This can only be a sign of things to come. All along the Great Lakes industrial cities are collapsing under the weight of the unemployed left behind when their companies closed their plants and moved their offices. While it Chicago is surely insulated from a majority of the effects of large scale loss of industrial closure, no one thought Detroit would collapse so horribly either.

Surely the comic book Superman would be given pause at the enormity of the problems we now face. Although he only had to wait until his clever writers came up with some deux ex machina to cure his conundrum. Our superman will have to rely on his own intelligence and the ability to find long term solutions for our problems.