Tag Archives: Marvel Comics

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) at Marvel Comics

Thanks to David Bruggeman’s Aug. 20, 2016 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog for this tidbit from Marvel Comics (Note: A link has been removed),

This week Marvel announced that several of its titles will have STEAM-themed variant covers.  Readers are likely familiar with the STEM acronym – science, technology, engineering and math.  STEAM adds art to the acronym, and can be favored by some advocates (who are generally objecting to the crowding out of many subjects in American education).

In November [2016] Marvel will issue variant covers for five of its titles, each one corresponding to a category in STEAM. …

An Aug. 19, 2016 article by Xavier Harding for Popular Science provides more information and preview images for the covers,

Marvel heroes are no strangers to science. Characters like Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Reed Richards and many more all have ties in science as either part-time, or full-time, scientists. Keeping with their science-based roots, Marvel’s latest crop of characters are engaging in the science fun as well.

In an attempt to spark interest in math and the sciences amongst readers, Marvel will introduce STEAM variant covers. Each cover will represent one of the themes relating to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. The education-themed Marvel covers will hit stands November 2016.

In a statement issued by Marvel, senior vice president of sales & marketing David Gabriel mentions how Marvel’s characters have inspired fans for ages. “With our new STEAM variants, we plan to continue to motivate our fans to explore their passions in the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, and math,” said Gabriel, “and present these disciplines through some of our favorite young heroes who are doing just that – following their dreams and preparing for the challenges that await them ahead.”

Moon Girl: Science

Moon Girl Marvel STEAM cover

Marvel

The Moon Girl, Lunella Lafayette, covers Marvel’s STEAM-branded issue.

*Iron*-Man Cover: Engineering

Ironheart

Marvel

Invincible Iron Man

Riri Williams will be know known as Ironheart

Champions Cover: Arts

Marvel STEAM branded cover

Marvel

Marvel STEAM branded cover

Starring Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Nova, Incredible Hulk, Viv and teenage Cyclops, this cover offers the Arts in STEAM.

I miss the days when you could find comic books at drugstores. In order to find these, I’ll have to make a special effort.

*’ron’ changed to ‘Iron’ on Sept. 14, 2016.

Accessing data the Marvel (comic book) way: uberframeworks and graphs

For want of a better term I’m going to be calling the company, Marvel. It is an entertainment conglomerate based in the world of comic books and comic book heroes and the company has a data problem as David Lumb points out in his Nov. 27, 2013 article for Fast Company (Note: A link has been removed),

After 70 years of publishing, Marvel Entertainment has built up an incredible universe of heroes, villains, and super teams–a sea of data that no mere wiki can organize. At long last, Marvel has embarked on a mighty quest of its own: to create an entirely new graph database and search system to conquer continuity malaise by visualizing each character across the Marvel Universe.

Here’s how Lumb describes the problem,

The problem, like with any massive chunk of data, lies in getting the right data pieces in front of users–but for Marvel, the question becomes a semantic exercise. Just who is the character Hawkeye?

Well, he’s Clint Barton, except when he’s not; erstwhile sidekick Kate Bishop and villain Bullseye have taken the Hawkeye identity. He’s a member of the Avengers, except when he’s not; he’s also been part of the Thunderbolts and West Coast Avengers. He got his skills performing trick shots in a circus, except when he didn’t: He got them as an agent redeeming a murder conviction in the Ultimate universe and as a Black Ops SHIELD agent in the Marvel films.

According to the article, Peter Olson, Marvel’s VP of Web and Application Development, is in charge of developing the new database (Note: A link has been removed),

“We want an uberframework–the words ‘ontology’ and ‘taxonomy’ get thrown around a lot,” Olson said. “We want characters to appear as close to as possible from all their stories and iterations but, overall, we want the characters to bubble up to archetypes.”

Most databases are relational, most easily visualized as tables of rows and columns: … Marvel still has use for this kind of database that returns queries with solid, irrefutable answers, like listing all the issues they’ve sold for the above prices.

The new database, however, will run on graph theory, looking for relationships between characters, teams, and events. The graph above [image removed] displays relationships between characters, which would be extremely difficult for a relational database that might look for superheroes but leave out villains instead of showing more abstract values, like how popular/visible a character is across Marvel’s comic titles.

There is of course a business case for this new approach (Note: Links have been removed from the article excerpt),

… The Marvel graph database will find an answer based not only on book similarities but nuanced metadata, like writer or artist style. Better still, it’ll do what the venerable ComicBookDatabase cannot: confidently propose a list of essential story arcs for the new fan.
And lo, Marvel’s multimedia empire strikes again: Aside from Sony’s death grip on Spider-Man, Marvel holds the rights to all its major characters, so their recommendations aren’t limited to subscriber-only comics on its Marvel Unlimited service. Let loose the hounds of suggested merchandise! Of course, this also means those ultra-streamlined character pages will become the most seamless portals to every character’s stories that the Internet has ever seen.

This is a good article, which I recommend reading in its entirety, although I do have one suggestion for David Lumb and/or his editor,

… the company now depicts the same characters across multiple mediums … [emphasis mine]

The plural in this context (mass communications) should have been media. Mediums are a group of people who communicate with the dead, as one of my professors informed us all in an undergraduate communications course. He was a bit of hardliner on the topic,. I found out later there is a group that uses both; artists use either media or mediums (Grammarist).

Graph Databases, are covered in a Wikipedia essay, which has this to say about them (Note: Links and footnotes have been removed),

A graph database is a database that uses graph structures with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. By definition,[according to whom?] a graph database is any storage system that provides index-free adjacency. This means that every element contains a direct pointer to its adjacent element and no index lookups are necessary.

The essay also offers this illustration,

[Downloaded from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database]

[Downloaded from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database]

Peter Olson, the VP who’s managing this new database for Marvel gave a talk at the Nov. 5 – 6, 2013 GraphConnect New York (City) meeting. His talk is described this way on the website (from the GraphConnect 2013 videos webpage),

Graphing the Marvel Universe – Peter Olson @GraphConnect NY 2013

This talk will give an overview of why graphs are such a powerful conceptual framework for modeling intellectual property and how Marvel uses them to represent the 70 years of fictional content from many different media that makes up the Marvel Universe.

The talk is approximately 40 mins. long and you can also find it here on Vimeo.

You can find more information (speakers, agenda, etc.) here about the Nov. 5 – 6, 2013 meeting in New York City and you can find out more about GraphConnect 2013 meetings in Boston, San Francisco, London (UK), and elsewhere by going here.

Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and nanotechnology?

I don’t often get the chance to reference Star Wars and last week’s announcement that A. P. N. G.  Enterprises has hired Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) to be a creative consultant wouldn’t ordinarily afford that opportunity. However, in this case, it turns out that Hamill will be consulting on a series of mulitmedia projects based on the comic book series, NEW-GEN. From the Oct. 14, 2011 news article by Mark Langshaw on Digital Spy,

JD Matonti, Chris Matonti and Julia Coppola of APNG created the series for Marvel Comics. The story takes place in an extra-dimensional world where everything is controlled by nanotechnology. [emphasis mine] It follows a fierce conflict between two top scientists.

A NEW-GEN movie is in the works, directed by Matonti. The company also plans to bring the series to television, mobile devices and video games.

NEW-GEN is a fresh and powerful new story that will surely resonate with audiences across multiple platforms,” Hamill said.

I wonder what they mean by “…  everything controlled by nanotechnology?”

There’s a bit more information in the Oct. 16, 2011 news item in the Calgary Herald,

To introduce Hamill, the company will release a special six-issue graphic novel, NEW-GEN: Volume One, featuring a “forward” from Hamill who shares his thoughts on this nextgeneration comic franchise that evolves around the battle over nanotechnology.

Matt Blum in his Oct. 13, 2011 article for Wired Magazine notes,

You may not be aware of it, but Mark Hamill is a huge comic book geek. Yes, the man who played Luke Skywalker and whose second career as a voice actor is second to none gets just as excited by comic books as most of the folks who hang on his every word as Joker.

Anyone curious about the NEW-GEN comic books can sample the first issue free. Here’s the summary of the first issue available from the download page,

New-Gen exists in another dimension; a utopian society where human beings, creatures, and robots co-exist in complete harmony until a battle over nanotechnology rages between two superhuman scientists. Gabriel banishes his former friend, Deadalus, to The Underworld, sends his infant twin sons to Earth and takes in the young children and creatures affected by Nanotechnology. The children and creatures grow up possessing unique “NanoPowers” in the Association for the Protection of the New Generation (A.P.N.G.) and will oppose Deadalus as he evolves into the purely evil Sly whose goal is to transform worlds.

If it seems familiar, it should be as I last profiled this series in my July 22, 2010 posting where I noted that the series originally launched in 2008 and had been reworked into something edgier for its 2010 relaunch. At that time, they were offering the first three issues for free.

Nanotech comic books

Originally released in 2008 by Marvel Comics, New-Gen chronicles the adventures of nanotechnology-enhanced super humans. From the article by Patrick Montero at the New York Daily News,

Though similar to other superhero teams, the nanopowered creatures of the futuristic action comic series, New-Gen, are not your average mutant superheroes. What sets them apart is the seamless blending of your classic superhero with real science-based fact.

“Nanotechnology is a real science,” exclaims J.D. Matonti, creator and co-writer of the New-Gen series, “I reached out to NASA scientist, Dr. Brad Edwards, [to learn about] the possibilities of nanotechnology. What if someone was composed of nanobots? What sort of incredible powers could manifest?

We wanted to employ a realistic approach as to where those nanopowers could originate from so when our audience read New-Gen they would think, ‘Hey, this can really happen!'”

I searched Dr.Brad Edwards and found an interview where someone with the same name and an association with NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) discusses his work on a space elevator. From Sander Olson’s article on Next Big Future,

… Dr. Edwards received his PhD in physics in 1990, and worked at Los Alamos National Lab for 11 years. After leaving Los Alamos, Dr. Edwards has dedicated his career to researching and developing the space elevator concept. All of his research indicates that the space elevator concept is valid and feasible. He currently heads a company called Black Line Ascension, which is actively promoting the space elevator concept. He has published several books on the space elevator, including The Space Elevator: A Revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transport System, and Leaving the Planet by Space Elevator.

I think this is the same person cited in Montero’s article and, while he doesn’t mention nanobots, he does discuss carbon nanotubes and their application in his space elevator project at some length.

Also cited in Montero’s article is a NASA Center for Nanotechnology. The site doesn’t seem to have been updated since April 2007. I mention it because of this comment in Montero’s article,

According to the NASA Center for Nanotechnology (CNT), nanotechnology robots, or nanobots, are microscopic machines that work on an atomic level to systematically organize and manipulate materials 100 millionth of a millimeter or smaller.

I couldn’t find any references to nanobots on that website. Perhaps the creators/writers gave Montero references that were valid in 2007 when they were likely researching and preparing the series prior to its 2008 launch?

I did go to the Marvel Comics website to find free copies of the first three installments of the series as promised in Montero’s article. (Go here.) From the Marvel Comics New-Gen page,

A battle over Nanotechnology rages between two superhuman scientists. Gabriel banishes his former friend, Deadalus, to an underworld, sends his infant twin sons to Earth and takes in the young children and creatures affected by Nanotechnology. The children and creatures grow up possessing unique NanoPowers in the Association for the Protection of New Generation (A.P.N.G.) and will oppose Deadalus as he evolves into the purely evil Sly attempting to transform worlds.

There’s also a New-Gen website where you can read up on the latest about the series, find biographies for each character, and more.

The series, from what I’ve seen of it, looks like it might be good, goofy fun although I understand from Montero’s article that the creative team has reworked the original stories to make them edgier for their new (2010) release as mobile comics. As for the science aspect, I think they had good intentions when they started the research.