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Our next DCU travel poster is for the Atom's burg, Ivytown.
By the way, when it was first introduced "Ivytown" was one word. Then they started to treat it as two words ("Ivy Town"). The fact that comic book lettering is all upper-case and is often kind of squunchy hasn't helped, and DC still doesn't do it consistently. I'm going with the one-word spelling, because it's the original one and because "-town" is much more commonly used as a suffix in place names than it is as part of an open compound.
Poor Ivytown. Unlike, say, Metropolis, Gotham, or Central City, it doesn't have a distinctive skyline or identifiable landmarks. The same was true of Coast City, but we got around that by choosing a skyline that was clearly on the water, had Hal Jordan zipping through, and was tinted green. But Ivytown doesn't have those kinds of geographic or chromatic short-cuts for us. Hm....
Turns out there aren't a lot of good images or information to work with for Ivytown. Mostly it's characterized as being centered around its prestigious school, Ivy University. The rest of it was quite vague, even for the Silver Age. It took writer Gail Simone to lavish some details on the Little Town That Could in her quirky All-New Atom series. Thanks to her and artist John Byrne, we do have this:
Ryan Choi's first view of Ivy University.
Okay. That's a pretty unique view, particularly with that statue there. I can work with that. Abstract that view a little bit, and we get...
A little color block variation for rhythm and balance. Collegiate font for the university setting. The red of the weird statue to bring out the Atom's logo. A cameo appearance by Ray Palmer himself. Really, the only thing missing is a silhouette of mad Jean Loring lurching around in a paranoidal panic, swinging a hotel cigarette stand above her head.
These are starting to look kind of nice on my one bedroom wall, by the way...
The next one, I'll let you contemplate in advance. It's one you probably couldn't get anywhere but here. The next DCU travel poster will be for Apex City. You think about that for a while, and see what your mind's eye comes up with...
