Infographics are a technological innovation that have revolutionized the news biz — actually for the better, in this case. The best ones help people visualize difficult concepts, or illustrate data that may otherwise feel too abstract. Like any tool, though, infographics can be overused, and applied to topics that don’t really warrant their creation, just because they’re trendy and look cool.
Marvel Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Marvel Comics Universe, published by Chronicle Books, falls more into the latter category. But is that necessarily a strike against it?
If you strip Marvel Super Graphic down to its essence, much like the minimalist representations within the book do with in-universe topics, you can kind of think of it as a more visually pleasing yet scattershot version of the classic Handbooks, which alphabetically and painstakingly broke down Marvel minituae. Marvel Super Graphic isn’t encyclopedic in breadth or in structure, but it might be a neat, mini-coffee table book that starts a random conversation or a deeper dive.
The bulk of the “infographics” in the surprisingly voluminous, 175-page Marvel Super Graphic are really just lists of things or events, forced into charts or trees that don’t add much to the trivia (hence the only slightly sarcastic quotation marks). It might be helpful to see everyone Peter Parker has ever lived with listed all in one place, but the spider insignia in the middle isn’t telling us something we didn’t already know. And what the hell is up with this Gordian acronym visualization?
That’s not even mentioning Hawkeye’s “puker” arrow! It’s cool to think about all the 48 trick arrows that are plotted over two pink pages, on axes of commonality and practicality, but is the one that makes crooks nauseated really the most common AND the most practical?! Must be, since the publisher’s ad copy of Marvel Super Graphic says it’s “officially licensed and vetted by Marvel.”
The worst of the lot (or best, depending on your point of view) are 14 “infographics” (heavy sarcasm quotes this time) that just reproduce a character’s face or symbol, with cute categories for what the colors represent. We’re told Black Widow’s iconic red hourglass represents “Russian,” and the black circle around it is “Takin’ her time.” Get it? They might be good for a chuckle, or a groan, but it’s hard not to think they’re also padding out the page count.
The best things for people who want to really feel like Marvel is “the world outside your window” are the maps of Manhattan and the globe, which feature famous New York City landmarks like the Daily Bugle and the Sanctum Sanctorum, and locations of fictional countries like Latveria and Genosha. Maybe the most useful actual infographic shows who’s won the most when the Hulk and the Thing throw down, when, and how.
There are some other cool visualizations that depict when and for how long characters have used certain names or identities. Did you know that Carol Danvers was “Binary” for 16 years? On the other hand, we probably didn’t need the one for Bucky. Yeah, he was Winter Soldier until he wasn’t. Then he was again. The end.
All right, that one’s pretty boss, too.
So what does Marvel Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Marvel Comics Universe want to be, and who’s it for? Creator Tim Leong has done work like this before, so he clearly has a following. Veteran comic scribe Kelly Sue DeConnick might say it best in a blurb for the book, that it will “delight the newbie Marvel reader and provide some unexpected surprises for the lifelong fan …” It’s no Handbook, and the nerdier might balk at the lack of references, but Nia Noble and Magner the Inhuman are definitely some deep cuts.
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