Prominent * (it sticks out like a sore thumb) aversion in the case of Edward Gorey. Most of his illustrated novels were set in an ersatz Edwardian England or an ersatz Europe of that era. Gorey himself never visited England, and rarely traveled outside his home state of Massachusetts. Though Gorey's books (which are books, not comics) do sometimes play this straight, as stories like "The Willowdale Handcar" and "The Iron Tonic" are in an ersatz Edwardian version of the US (the former featuring town names that are amusing parodies to New Englanders like those from Gorey's home state) and he devoted an entire book, "The Lavender Leotard", to very obscure in-jokes about his obsession, the New York City Ballet and George Balanchine. (Gorey saw literally every performance for several seasons, and the book is basically observations that would only make sense to another NYCB balletomane.)
Averted in the Argentinian comic strip (and animated movie) Boogie El Aceitoso: Despite the author being Argentinian, the titular character, Boogie, is a racist, white American hitman who hate (and kills) black people and Hispanics for fun, and most of his stories take place in the United States, or in few cases, in Central America during the many wars that happened there in the 80s, but never in Argentina. Even the author himself lampshaded the fact many times in many interviews about the topic.
Played straight and averted by Mortadelo y Filemón: There are plenty of stories set in other countries or as world trips (not that they're accurate or anything), but quite a few have evil criminals, aliens or whatever that just happen to hide/go to Spain for no real reason. Best example? Expediente J. The evil aliens send a few havoc-causing phlebotinum rocks to Spain (and accurately, around the area the main characters live at that) and when their leader appears at the end, he assumes that has caused ALL of humanity to be a mess. What?
Although Italian Disney artists occasionally point out that Duckburg is supposed to in North America, they tend to make the Disney characters take a particular interest in Italian history, Italian culture and Italian geography. Sometimes it's justified—you don't have to know much about tourism to realize that a restaurant with a view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a good investment (although you have to wonder how a busy financial tycoon like Scrooge McDuck can find the time to run the place himself). But it seems weird that Scrooge and Rockerduck would drop everything to see who can be the first to build a bridge over the strait of Messina, Sicily. Or that Mickey Mouse's nephews argue obsessively over who was Italy's best player in the FIFA World Cup 18 years ago.
Of course one of the major antagonists, Magica De Spell is an Italian (though her creator is American).
Don Rosa was guilty of this at several points throughout his works. In The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Scrooge arrives in Louisville, Kentucky, Rosa's home town. The comics also often mention Burbank, presumably referring to the California municipality where Disney's studios happen to be located.
The Beano is created by DC Thomson who are based in Dundee, Scotland, and their Scottish origins are often clear most notably in strips based around Scotland such as the McTickles, Wee Ben Nevis and Red Rory of the Eagles.
Mexican comics tend to play with this tropea lot of times, since we see some stories that take place in Mexico and other titles in other countries or outside Earth. Some notable examples:
Most of the stories in Fantômas (the Mexican version, not the French one) take place overseas and a few times in Mexico too. The fact that the title character's nationality is unknown does help.
Kalimán, another Mexican comic, also takes place worldwide along with Mexico sometimes. And the title character, Kalimán, hails from India and his young sidekick, Solin, is from Egypt.
The black-and-white comic, Samurai: John Barry averts this trope, since the whole series takes place in the Sengoku-era Japan (and sometimes in Europe) and all the characters are Japanese and Europeans, but we don't see a single Mexican character here.note Justified, due to the time period, since Mexico didn't exist as a country, but as an Spanish colony in that era.
The highly-controversial comic, (in the U.S., at least) Memin Pinguin takes place most of the time in Mexico, but some of the later story arcs took place abroad, like in the United States and Africa.
Soul Keepers, another Mexican comic, also avoids this trope: While some stories of the comic take place in Mexico, the titular characters, the Soul Keepers, are not Mexicans.
7 Prisoners is a French comic that takes place in a prison on the moon, housing hundreds of thousands of prisoners from all over the world. Naturally, three of the eponymous prisoners are French (four if you count the artificial lifeform created by two of the Frenchmen). And of the three Frenchmen, two committed crimes so they could go to the prison and find something, meaning they're just about the only inmates who aren't career criminals. Just saying.
The infamous Novas Aventuras de Megaman, amongst its many changes, abruptly uproots the entire Mega Man franchise and claims that it takes place in Brazil (and always has). It got even more blatant when one writer introduced a Creator's Pet character with strong nationalistic beliefs who ranted about how there need to be more comics about Brazilian characters; then it came to light that said writer planned for his character to kill off the Mega Man characters and take over the comic, which got him fired.
Belgian Comics: Many Belgian comics take place in Brussels or a typical Flemish/Walloon village.
Suske en Wiske: The main characters have time travelled a lot to periods in Flemish/Belgian history and have met many Flemish folklore characters. When the series caught on in the Netherlands the characters suddenly started using KLM airlines and travelling more to hot spots in the Netherlands. It got to the point that they even referred to themselves as Dutch in some stories. In "De Goalgetter" Suske become a soccer champion and joins the Dutch national team rather than the Belgian one.
Haagse Harry: All action takes place in The Hague, The Netherlands, where all the characters also speak with the local accent of that city.
Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, just like Power Dolls above, is an sci-fi, alien version of this trope, albeit a somewhat contrived version of it: The titular heroine hails from a planet who is basically, taking into account the way how it is described in-universe, an alien, furry version of Japan, since it shares similar customs and traditions. Her best friend Toki, on the other hand, is depicted as came out from the alien version of the Netherlands, or at least the stereotypical version of it. While there's an alien version of the U.S. (the Independent Lepine Republic), they are depicted as the bad guys, mixed with tropes of the Nazi Germany. Even more egregious the author is a former member of the USAF.
In a more meta-example of this trope, most of the animal species who appears in the story are descendant from American, European and Oceanian species and breeds, albeit some stock animals from African countries (hippos, lions, cheetahs, etc) also appears as well. There's almost no animals from Asian countries (like Tanukis), albeit in some fanart the author has included some Asian breeds like the Japanese Shiba Inu breed. As a rule of thumb, Western species and breeds tends to appear more frequently in the story than non-Western ones.
This is averted however in the supplementary material, especially The New Traveller's Almanac which has references to Colombian, French, Russian literature and other obscurities. Later volumes also make heavy references to German playwright Bertolt Brecht and Jules Verne (whose creations include Captain Nemo) is a French author. Likewise, The Nemo Trilogy makes references to Godzilla and German Expressionism.
One reason why Moore plays this trope straight is that his books are about the darker aspects of culture and the way literary imaginations of certain places and events (such as how English people imagine African, Chinese and Indian writers) coloured real-life visions of these cultures. The motif of a Constructed WorldAlternate Universe based entirely on fictional depictions of the past is partially a commentary on the limits and virtues of the fictions various cultures dream up.
Most stories in WILQ – Superbohater take place in Opole, which the authors' home town, and much effort was given to faithful depiction of locations and names around the town. On few occasions, Wilq visits Cracow, where the Minkiewicz brothers have been living since their study at the Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s.
Asterix takes place in Bretagne, France. The protagonists are Gauls (Frenchmen) who frequently visit other countries, where Obelix always dismisses the odd habits of local people as "crazy". Many jokes reference francophone culture and aren't always that easily translatable to other countries.
The original authors of W.I.T.C.H. set the series in a fictional American city but ended up making it look more like an European one, resulting in non-European fans being unable to understand where Heatherfield is supposed to be. Averted with the animated adaptation, where Heatherfield is clearly shown as an American city.
Various comic books from Chilean Media are based on real Chilean cities where their characters come from. Two notable examples are the characters of Diablo and Captain Chile, in which adventures happen in Santiago and Valparaiso respectively (where their creators come from), and both having recreations of these cities in their comic books.
In the 2000 AD comic Zombo, it's implied that the Earth government is largely American in nature, given that Donald Trump is President of the United Space of America, but there's also a "Shadow" President, a term which is not really used outside the United Kingdom to denote the opposition.
Downplayed in the Italian comic Dylan Dog. The writers usually take great pains to respect the comic's London setting, but over the course of the time there's been an oddly high number of clues/riddles/whatever that needed to be solved in Italiannote The comic, of course, is written in Italian but the characters are supposed to be speaking English just as a character who can speak Italian happens to be nearby.
Alan Ford is supposedly set in America, but there are many elements of the scenery, humor and characters are built to recall the ones from Italy, specifically Milan (Max Bunker's hometown), with an entire volume dedicated to the phoenomenon of the "Paninari", younger and "hippier" Italian people who despise the older generation and, as a symbol, prefer to eat panini (sandwiches) over the iconic spaghetti. Italy receives several mentions and is visited by the heroes more than once.
The Italian comic Saturno Contro la Terra (Saturn Versus Earth) has Italian heroes and Italy assuming an extremely important role among Earth's powers, but is notable in that it makes the effort to provide explanations for it in that professor Marcus (who is implied to actually be British or American and merely working in Italy) and his assistants are the first to warn the world of the impending invasion, thus receiving the international support needed to thwart it, and that Rebo cripples Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, France and Germany but is foiled right before he could take out Italy, leaving the latter with mostly intact economy, industry and military while otherwise greater powers are in shambles. Then in "The Island of Sand" Rebo goes after humanity's greatest scientists from all nations, leaving only Marcus (who had a security detail that foiled the initial kidnapping attempt) able to oppose him.
Alan Moore is from Northampton, England, and extremely proud of it to the extent that a majority of his works (no matter where they're set) end up tied to Northampton somehow.
