Every once in a while you stumble upon an obsessive hobby niche with some really stunning visualizations. Today’s obsession: Avengers comic books and the work of Jer Thorp. It turns out that there is a massive database of comic book metadata to work with.

The covers of every Avengers issue:

Who appears in each issue, by date:

Jer goes on to look at Avengers by first appearance, sex, robot, gods, and in part II who appeared more, who created the characters, and so on. I only wish he had shared more about how he built the visualization tools.