from Nature online:
Reality check foils Spider-Man
Captain America wins superhero networking crown.
22 February 2002
PHILIP BALL
Spider Man had connections in the superhero world.
© 2002 Marvel Characters Inc.
There is something abnormal about Spider-Man's friends. Admittedly, the Human Torch, Ant Man and Wonder Man aren't exactly your average citizens, but Spanish scientists have uncovered a more subtle distinction between the realm of Marvel comics and the real world.
The web of superhero interactions, woven without any master plan by the Marvel writers over 40 years, has tell-tale differences from real social networks, say the researchers1. Inventing a universe is harder than you might think.
Strangely, the Marvel network is not purely random either. It shares some non-random features with the social networks of collaborating scientists or co-starring movie actors.
Ricardo Alberich and co-workers at the University of the Balearic Isles in Spain, are tracing the evolution of the Marvel Universe in detail. They hope to understand which non-random features of real social networks are a consequence of the way people interact, and which follow from more general principles about network growth.
Crossing paths
A vast pantheon of superheroes - including Spider-Man and the X-Men - collaborate and cross each other in the cosmic battle of good and evil that is Marvel Comics. Heroes and villains have appeared in one another's title series, formed new allegiances, fuelled new enmities and given the impression of an entire universe of interlinked stories and lives.
This world was the brainchild of Stan Lee, who masterminded the relaunch of Timely Comics Inc. under the name Marvel in 1961. The narrative threads have been mapped out in a database called the Marvel Chronology Project.
Alberich's team has studied the statistical properties of the network of 6,486 characters in the 12,942 Marvel comic books. On average, each book features just over seven characters; one features 111.
The probability of a book containing a certain number of specific characters depends on the group size, the team found, at least for groups of ten or more. To this extent the Marvel Universe resembles real networks.
A closer look reveals the Marvel Universe's artificiality. For example, social networks have a property called clustering: two people who share a common friend are more likely to know one another than are two people chosen at random.
The Marvel network is only very weakly clustered - about 1.5 times more than a random network. Clustering in real networks is typically ten (or more) times greater than in random webs.
"It seems," say the researchers, "that Marvel writers did not assign characters to books in the same way as natural interactions would have done it." But how the Marvel network has ended up with some non-random features has the scientists foiled right now.
The researchers used the shape of the network to deduce the best connected character of the Marvel Universe - the Kevin Bacon of superheroes, if you will. Aptly enough, it is Captain America, a veteran of the 1940s Timely Comics era.
References
Alberich, R., Miro-Julia, J. & Rosselló, F. Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network. Preprint, (11 February 2002).
cellomould
"In other words, your God is the warden of a prison where the only prisoner is your God." Jose Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ