Coast City

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Coast City is a fictional city created by John Broome and Gil Kane that appears in stories published by DC Comics. It is depicted most often as the home of the Silver Age version of the superhero Green Lantern, Hal Jordan.

[edit] History

Coast City, which first appeared in Showcase #22 in September-October 1959, was a city located in California. This made it one of the few fictional cities in the DC Universe to have a specifically given location from the start.

Coast City was usually portrayed as an analogue of San Diego or Los Angeles. Green Lantern: Rebirth identified it as being in Northern California, and recent issues of Green Lantern listed it as being twenty miles from Edwards Air Force Base. This would seem to be contradictory (and might indicate that Edwards is in a different location in the DC Universe than it is in ours).

The Atlas of the DC Universe published by Mayfair Games in 1990, placed Coast City in northern California, between San Francisco and Green Arrow's Star City.

Features of Coast City included Ferris Aircraft, an aerospace company which Hal Jordan worked for as a test pilot; his romantic interest, Carol Ferris, was the company's manager. Coast City also included an extensive beach, and was a popular spot for surfing.

[edit] Destruction

In the 1990s, Coast City was destroyed, with nearly all of its residents - then numbered at seven million - killed by former astronaut Hank Henshaw, better known as the Cyborg Superman, an enemy of Superman. Along with Mongul, Henshaw built Engine City in Coast City's ashes, as part of a plot to turn Earth into the new War World.

One of the results of this was Hal Jordan becoming the villain Parallax, apparently due to a mental breakdown over the destruction of his city, though it would subsequently be revealed he was under the influence of an alien parasite. This led in turn to the appointment of a new Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner. A memorial to Coast City's victims was erected on the site of the city with the help of most of the major superheroes of the period. When Hal Jordan died, it memorialized him as well.

For a time, an alien city named Haven (which crashed onto Earth) resided on top of the ruins of Coast City.

[edit] Reconstruction

More recently, Coast City was rebuilt in the wake of Jordan's apparent return to the ranks of the living. While the Spectre, Hal Jordan, and the Parallax parasite were wresting for control of the Spectre's powers, all roads, street signs, and Jordan's apartment reappeared, setting the groundwork for the city. Repopulating the rebuilt city became one of the latest initiatives of Jonathan Vincent Horne, then-current president of the United States. Thus far, Coast City has remained a ghost town due to its reputation as the site of a mass murder. Among the exceptions depicted to date is the resurrected Hal Jordan, who lives in Coast City when he isn't working at nearby Edwards Air Force Base as one of their test pilots.

The U.S. Navy is also establishing a presence in the region in the wake of its reconstruction, as both a domestic security and economic stimulus measure, as depicted in Green Lantern (4th series) # 4-5.

One year after the events of Infinite Crisis, Coast City has finished recontruction. The city's population appears to have risen with many businesses and citizens returning. The reconstruction has yet to be depicted, but will be referenced during the limited series 52.