ORIGIN STORY · watch the Marvel universe grow

1939

1 of 303 characters · 0 links

You are watching the Marvel universe assemble in order of first appearance, 1939 to 2020, one debut at a time. Press Play (or drag Time) and watch who collects the links.

Time 1 / 303

Speed 8 characters / s

Most linked, right now (in-degree)

…

Degree distribution so far (CCDF, log-log)

Things to try. Click any node that has already arrived to pin its card and light up its links; click it again, or empty canvas, to let it go. Then switch modes up top and compare where the glow ends up: in the models the centre glows, because whoever arrives first collects the links — on Wikipedia the glow is a ring, the class of 1962. That gap is the whole point.

Reading the picture. Nodes sit on a spiral by arrival order: centre = 1939 (or node #1), rim = 2020 (or the last node). Size is links collected so far, and the current leader glows. In the heroes-and-villains replay colour is the side — heroes cyan, villains red, both gold — and purple links cross the line.

Data: the frozen course snapshot, our crawl of the supervillain category, and debut years from each character's infobox. The card shows each article's lead image, loaded from Wikipedia as you play; that art belongs to Marvel and is shown for identification only. How we tested it →