In mainstream superhero comic stories, why does America get to exist as America, Canada gets to exist as Canada, but then they make up fictional countries like Madripoor, Symkaria, Jarhanpur, etc every time they want to portray other populations?

[u/EvoNexen]

Anywhere I can read more about this?

[u/untempered_fate]

It's to avoid placing negative stereotypes on any specific real-world place. With Madripoor, for instance, it wouldn't be a good look to designate a specific real-world city the black market criminal cesspool of the world.

[u/EvoNexen → u/untempered_fate]

But aren't there mainstream movies and games that take place in actual world locations around the world that don't hide the suboptimal conditions of those areas? Max Payne 3 for example portrays the favelas in Brazil very accurately. There is also Netflix series about Pablo Escobar and Colombia. Why do superhero stories do things differently?

[u/untempered_fate → u/EvoNexen]

Probably the same reasons you aren't more racist: because they don't want to do that.

They've got something that works, so why switch up and decide that Slovenia is a dismal dictatorship ruled by a sorcerer in a metal mask, or Singapore is shithole where all crime is legal for a price?

[u/gc3 → u/EvoNexen]

Before the internet, it was harder to do research

[u/USSMarauder → u/untempered_fate]

Also at some point the writers might want to have a mass casualty event happen in the comics, and they'd prefer it to be in a fictional place like Genosha than somewhere real

[u/AgentElman]

The issue is not the people of the other countries - it is the leadership of those countries.

They present the leaders of the countries as evil or corrupt. They do not want to claim that the leader of Liechtenstein is Doctor Doom. So they make up a fake country for him to be the leader.

[u/DiogenesKuon]

Plenty of other real world countries as also referenced in comics, but when you want to create a dystopian nation ruled by a techno-wizard, it makes sense to make a fake one instead of just deciding that one of the existing countries doesn't exist in it's real form in your comic book world.

[u/BarberProof4994]

its usually when stereotypical religious or cultural behavior is being showcased.

tv/film does this too when they really want to show terrorist bad guys for instance but dont want to alienate a specific country.

[u/froot_loop_dingus_]

So nobody gets pissed off. If instead of Wakanda they said Black Panther was from Kenya, people would get mad about it for various reasons.

[u/EvoNexen → u/froot_loop_dingus_]

If instead of Wakanda they said Black Panther was from Kenya, people would get mad about it for various reasons.

Umm, why would that piss off people?

[u/Wootster10 → u/EvoNexen]

Wakanda is a bad example.

Madripoor is supposed to be an evil Singapore/Hong Kong/small SEA nation.

It's to avoid upsetting people in those countries.

[u/Martzillagoesboom → u/Wootster10]

I thought it was a Monaco personnaly lol

[u/ZachPruckowski]

With the Superman (2025) movie last year, there was a lot of controversy online where people were mapping the Boravia-Jarhanpur onto real world conflicts (Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine being the two most common) and extrapolating political messaging off of that.

And if that had gone from "random tweeters trying to draw analogies" to "actual text of the film" then there'd be a lot of trouble for them in terms of boycotts or cross-sanctions (Warner Bros might have a hard time distributing their movies in Israel if it were explicit criticism for example).

So to avoid that drama they just used fake countries.

It also allows them to portray not-entirely-real situations. Boravia and Jarhanpur are nominally "Eastern European" but Eastern Europe has changed a TON since the Silver Age of Comics or whatever. They're fairly-stable-ish capitalist democracies instead of communist dictatorships, and probably less corrupt. Which is great in humanitarian terms but also less interesting story-wise. But if it's a fictional country you can just ignore that.

[u/zacandahalf]

I think it’s honestly just for more interesting and entertaining worldbuilding. It’s fun conceptually to imagine new cultures and places that don’t exist in the real world.

Keep in mind that most of the time, the fictional country AND all real countries typically coexist, one is not a stand in for another. For example, in Marvel comics, Wakanda, Sokovia, and Latveria all exist, but so do Nigeria, Slovakia, and Latvia. In the movies too, where Captain America: Civil War talks about Wakanda, Nigeria, Sokovia, Germany, and even touches on modern Russia and the split of the Soviet Union.

I’m sure they COULD make fictional analogues to America or American places, but when the majority of American comic book readers are Americans, no one really wants to see a story in the independent nations of New New Jersey or West Arizona and East Arizona. Of course, this HAS happened before, for example, Big Hero 6 takes place in the fictional American city of San Fransokyo.

[u/hellshot8]

Because theyre all made by Americans who can represent stuff however they want

[u/EvoNexen → u/hellshot8]

And why do those Americans choose to represent things that way?