‘Welcome to Smallville’ billboard, from an early Superboy comic.

‘Welcome to Smallville’ billboard, from an early Superboy comic.

Perhaps the closest fictional town to my novel’s Goodmews is Smallville, home of Superboy/Superman. (This is the Smallville of the 40’s and 50’s Superman comics, not as depicted in later TV programmes.) Smallville, like Goodmews, was an idyllic, small, isolated American town, with friendly residents, locally owned businesses and one newspaper.