Marvel Universe Almost Looks like a real Social Network

The computing power has increased so much, and data sources too, that we get to now do really sophisticated studies of totally weird stuff. I mentioned to J last night a statistical study I'd seen a while back about how the Marvel universe didn't quite look like a real social network because Marvel editors tended to use Spiderman in a way to generate sales that was dissimilar to how true social networks looked. I think this is the article I was thinking of: "Marvel University Almost Looks like a Real Social Network" by R. Alberich, J. Miro-Julia, F. Rossell. This is a favorite paper among people who study social networks. Here's the abstract:

We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of "real-life” collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics.

Another paper, similar to this one in aim and design, was published last year in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. This one is entitled "How to become a superhero" by Pablo Gleiser. It's abstract reads,

Abstract. We analyze a collaboration network based on the Marvel Universe comic books. First, we consider the system as a binary network, where two characters are connected if they appear in the same publication. The analysis of degree correlations reveals that, in contrast to most real social networks, the Marvel Universe presents a disassortative mixing on the degree. Then, we use a weight measure to study the system as a weighted network. This allows us to find and characterize well defined communities. Through the analysis of the community structure and the clustering as a function of the degree we show that the network presents a hierarchical structure. Finally, we comment on possible mechanisms responsible for the particular motifs observed.

I have a faint memory that one of these, or maybe it was a third one, noted that Spiderman was one of the things that made the social networks in MU less realistic, because he is basically friends or has appeared with almost every other person in MU. Yes, here it is from the first paper (quoted in the second paper):

They obtained a network formed by 6486 characters and 12 942 books, where two characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same comic book. AMJR found that the MU looks almost like a real social network, since it has most of, but not all, the characteristics of real collaboration networks such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. In particular, the average degree of the MU is much smaller than the theoretical average degree of the corresponding random model, thus indicating that Marvel characters collaborate more often with the same characters. Also, the clustering coefficient is smaller than what is usual in real collaboration networks. Finally, the degree distribution presents a power law with an exponential cutoff, P(k) ~ k–τ10–k/c with an exponent τ = 0.7158. Since τ is much smaller than two the average properties of the network are dominated by the few actors with a large number of collaborators, indicating that some superheroes such as Captain America or Spider-Man present many more connections than would be expected in a real life collaboration network