Well... yeah, magic exists, but even someone on Batman's level doesn't see much of it. Gods, ditto. Most people living in Gotham are going to have as much direct experience of "aliens" (ie. Superman, really) as they do of tornados and tsunamis. A major superhero battle is going to register with them on the level of an earthquake crossed with a surprise appearance from Britney and Michael Jackson: powers beyond their level of comprehension, damage and danger they can only gape at or run from, coupled with celebrity sightings.
That's completely the opposite of how I see the DCU. In the DCU, superhero/villain fights are like regular occurences. If you work in downtown Metropolis, you've been late to work many, many times because Superman and (insert name here) were beating the stuffing out of each other. If you live in Keystone, you see the faint red blur go by at least once a week. Just like they say that everyone who's lived in New York for a while has a story about having been mugged, everyone who lives in Gotham has a story about being mugged but having their purse or wallet returned by Batman and/or Robin.
Oh, and periodically everyone turns into a toaster, or their minds are controlled by Starro, or your city gets eaten by a painting, or whatever.
I mean, the DCU United Nations includes Atlantis, Themiscyra has embassies, and it's part of DCU continuity that on a particular day (at the end of GM's JLA run), every single human being on Earth gained superpowers, flew out into space, and battled Mageddon.
Think about it. Every single human being who was alive at that time (which has to be only a few years ago in continuity) has personally experienced being a superhero for a day and flying into space to battle an ancient superweapon from the days of the Old Gods alongside the JLA.
Then, presumably, the next day, the depowered six billion people went back to work, as if shit like that happened to them everyday... because shit like that does happen to them every day.
Substitute Imperiex, or the Sheeda, or the whole Solaris nanoplague thing, or the time R'as al-Ghul jammed all forms of communication on Earth, or all the chaos of Infinite Crisis, or any other event which totally overturned the daily life of every single inhabitant of a city, a country, or maybe even every person on Earth for a brief time before it was fixed.
The DCU only really works if you go totally over the top with it. The average citizen lives in a world of everyday wonders and horrors, and the fact that certain forms of everyday life still appear superficially like ours, despite the fact that their world is totally different, is another one of those inexplicable wonders. |
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