Marvel Universe Is Almost Like *Real Life* Society

TheMatt writes "Scientists at the University of the Balearic Isles have analyzed the Marvel Universe and found that it is almost like real society. The team studied the statistical properties of each character, the books they were in, and who else appeared in them (through resources like the MCP). While there were some similarities to real society, a close look revealed the artificiality. For example, the MU isn't very clustered, only 1.5x that of a random network; real life is about 10x more clustered. Of course, the realities of comics (the business) are why this occurs. Also, they found the most networked of all Marvel heroes was Steve Rogers, Captain America himself."

Comments

Re:explanation

[Xerithane]

Here's a translation:
Marvel Comic book characters are modelled after real world social interactions. Such as Person A has Friend B who has a Friend C, at a 3rd degree of seperation. Person A is more likely to know Friend C, because of social clustering.

All it is doing is showing a web of each characters connections and affiliations, similar to a six-degrees setup. Like Kevin Bacon.

Missing something?

[ThePlague]

Maybe I don't quite understand the research, but it doesn't seem that surprising that the Marvel Universe does not follow real-world clustering patterns: many of the characters have dual identities, which I would think throw off the usual associative relationship of friends.

As an example, consider this scenario:

Jane Goodcitizen is friends with Peter Parker.
Spiderman is friends with Captain America.(?-don't know, but let's just say)

In the real world, there would be a high correlation of friendship between Jane and Captain America, while the whole secret identity thing puts a monkey-wrench in the comic universe.

The closest real-world model would probably be the network of say traveling salesmen or spies.

Re:explanation

[NecroPuppy]

There is, of course, the Marvel First Meeting Corollary, which states that,

"No matter how many friends/associates they have in common, the first meeting between two heroes commonly results in them fighting."

Re:OMFG

[dwarfviking]

I'm wondering just how much exactly they spent on this study just to find out that comic books are in fact based on real society? I think the only reason this would even be important to the slashdot community is to see how foolishly Universities spend their money. I could have told them that comic books contain artificial societies for only $100 probably saving them thousands...

Well, the point of the research is: When you set up an artifical universe, with artifical character relationships, what networking properties emerge, and how, exactly, do they compare to the networking properties of the real society on which the artificial construct was based?

The researchers probably don't give a flying fig about the Marvel Universe itself. It just happens to be a rich model (designed by someone else) which they're trying to use to figure out causes and principles of population interaction.

Bjorn Christianson

Bleh...

[drrobin_]

You're right, though. How about putting that money into real research. Organizations like NASA get budget cuts while projects studying the Marvel Universe go on?

Well, first off, the study was done in Spain. Last I checked, NASA funding from Spain wasn't getting cut ;P

Actually, though, all the outrage here seems kinda silly to me. What happened to the "Science for the sake of Science" mantra? This is exactly that.

Yes, it doesn't have on-the-surface real-world applications. Reading comic books isn't gonna make a cure for cancer. However, it -does- have some economic value.

Think entertainment. TV shows, computer games, books, comics. If I were creating one of these, I could benefit from this study, a LOT. Marvel comics are extremely successful, and they have a "clustring level" of about 1.5. I wonder what some of the failures have? Probably, a lot less. This is valuable, because gives me hard figures correlating success or failure of a venture with the reality level of its social networks.

Even if it only increases the "reality index" of my entertainment products by 3%, that's significant. A universe which can be related to by my readers in inherently more interesting. If it's more interesting, then more people will buy my product, increasing my revenue, potentially by a lot.

Plus, a bunch of scientists got to sit around reading comics :)

( unless, of course, the study was done by computer OCR of the comics, but still... gotta do something with them once they're scanned :D )