AVENGERS ASSEMBLE: visualizing the social network of Marvel characters
No matter what do you think of superheroes movie, you have to give Marvel a credit. With 24 movies on screen and several closely-related streaming TV series, Marvel has created its expanding cinematic universe which has achieved huge commercial success and gained a large number of fans around the globe.
While the fourth Avengers’ movie The Endgame has ended for two years, Marvel fans are still reminiscing about the grand scene of the final battle and the lines “Avengers Assemble” by Captain America through gritted teeth. As one of the “big two” publishers in the comic industry, Marvel comic has created over 8000 characters in its history of more than 80 years. Since the movie series have brought a large number of beloved characters and cultural icons in real life, maybe it’s time to revisit and visualize their networks to gain a comprehensive understanding as well as a possible prediction of the development and blueprint of the outspreading MCU.
With the help of the dataset created by Claudio Sanhueza, which explore and sort out the relations of characters in 12600 comic books, we are able to build the network below of 26 characters which have the most appearances in MCU.
The first conclusion we can draw, clearly, is that the network of heroes is considerably complicated, even comparable to real life interpersonal social network. In stead of a scattered or grouped distribution, the network shows a comprehensive polymer where everyone can somehow related to everyone.
In the center of the spider web lies the two core figures of Marvel, Captain America and Iron Man (Tony Stark). The two of them not only have connections with nearly everyone in the entire social network, but also have the closest relationship with each other, which makes it a wise decision for Marvel to choose the two superheroes as the starting point for developing movie universe and introducing more characters.
Among the original 6 avengers, Black Widow/Natasha and Thor are also socialists in the comic. However, it is also clear that though the only female agent of the original avengers has a relatively wide range of social network, Natasha’s connections with others are not deep and strong with intensive depictions. In contrast, the weight of Thor’s network is rather higher, with not only Asgadian but also other characters on earth. This might reflects the minor image and marginal status of female characters in Marvel.
Another thing to note is about the villains. Marvel has been long criticized for the shaping of the villains when comparing with its biggest competitior, DC. Judging from the network, such criticism may not be unreasonable and ungrounded. Most of the bad guys in the MCU lack continuity and consistency, appearing in only one movie. While the network of heroes are integrated, you can hardly see the network of bad guys. The three villains with the most appearance so far, namely Thanos, Crossbones, Red Skulls are all rather independent with each others and only have connections with good people.
Moreover, since the Infinity War has been a big shuffle of the superheroes with many beloved characters dead or withdraw, the question becomes that which hero would be the next trump card and social king/queen. Vision and Scarlet Witch couple, Spider-Man and Captain Marvel are three promising answers due to their wide popularity. WandaVision is the first TV series Marvel has collaborated with Disney Plus depicting the strong relationship between the couple, which proves to be a success. With Spider-Man III, Captain Marvel II and other character solo movies are also on their way to theaters, Marvel will continue to expand its universe based on the network built by the great comics.
