Peter Suderman on Superhero Subsidies

This summer's most colossal box-office winner was writer-director Joss Whedon's big-budget, big-screen adaptation of the classic Marvel superhero comic The Avengers, writes Peter Suderman. For the bulk of the street scenes, they relocated to a city not commonly mistaken for America's most prominent metropolis: Cleveland.

Why Cleveland? The decision to film in the Forest City can be explained in two words: tax subsidies.