Superhero narratives are renowned for their complicated histories: costumes change, sidekicks shuffle off into the distance, villains die, get resurrected, then die again. It’s a problem that Tim Leong, the man behind new book Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe, is familiar with. “The sheer volume of that history can be overwhelming,” he says. “Where do you start? There are back stories, obscure characters, interweaving plot lines—it's all great stuff that’s begging to be distilled into a more understandable package.” Including an exhaustive number of graphs and charts relating to multiple strands of comic book history, Leong’s collection of data art deliberates over the relative earnings of your favorite masked vigilantes—Batman’s Bruce Wayne is richer than Iron Man’s Tony Stark—and spells out the liberal, conservative, authoritarian and libertarian political persuasions of these fictional heroes and villains. Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Comic Foundry and Director of Digital Design at Wired before assuming his current role as Design Director at Fortune, Leong has been a comic book fan for most of his life. “I was attracted to comics as they contained these huge worlds that were fun to read; it was total escapism,” he says of the roots of his passion. “It felt like a big, reassuring hug because you were instantly part of this bigger community of like-minded people.”

 
Super Graphic, A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe by Tim Leong is published September 1 by Chronicle Books.