Inspired by this blog post, courtesy Con C de Arte, exemplifying Andy Kubert’s consistently unimaginative and chronically lazy approach to grounding his work in any kind of believable reality, I thought I’d supply my own example, from Batman #665, written by Grant Morrison. Just as is the case with his depiction, in Batman #658, of Gibraltar as an island inhabited by beret-wearing, mustache-adorned – and probably baguette-toting – Frenchies, his conjuring up of Venice is somewhat lacking, to say the least. How exactly did the Ponte Vecchio of Florence end up in the Serenissima? I mean, how hard can it be to do a Google image search for ‘Venice’, find, say, the Rialto bridge in the first set of images, and stick it on the page the way it was done with the famous Florentine bridge here? And what’s with the viking longboat-style ‘gondolas’? Where are the editors in all of this?
This by the way, is the first set of images that comes up when you google ‘Gibraltar’ – there are several maps and an aerial photo, as well as images showing the surroundings, ie. the actually city and such, of the Rock.
And just to demonstrate that Marvel is not free of these silly mistakes, here’s a glorious panel by Frank Cho from Mighty Avengers #1.