'Expanding Universe Wall Chart' offers unique view of Marvel Comics

You’re going to need a bigger coffee table.

“Marvel: The Expanding Universe Wall Chart” is a combination coffee table book and poster — a very large poster.

A book without a spine, open “The Expanding Universe Wall Chart” one way and it offers a history of Marvel Comics and a series of short, fun features on Marvel. Open it the other way and it expands into a 12-foot by 3 1/2-foot poster featuring more than 300 Marvel characters against an atomic design pattern reflecting connections between the characters.

 “I referred to this thing as the monstrosity throughout the entire production period,” said writer Michael Mallory.

Mallory’s past books include “Marvel: The Characters and Their Universe” and “X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe.” So writing the book part of “The Expanding Wall Chart” wasn’t much of a stretch for him. The challenge was figuring out the connections for the chart — what Mallory calls “a large visual metaphor for the Marvel universe.”

The wall chart features six group “atoms.” The center atom features the Fantastic Four — “the group that really marked the beginning of what we call the Marvel universe,” Mallory said. There’s also the closely related Avengers atom, plus atoms featuring Spider-Man, the X-Men, Golden Age characters from Marvel’s beginnings, and horror and “other-worldly” characters such as Dr. Strange and Howard the Duck.

The idea, which began with a publisher’s suggestion for a Marvel family tree, is that each character is connected to another character around it on at least one level. That connective tissue may be actual family ties, a team affiliation or some other commonality.

 Some characters were easier to connect than others. “Spider-Man, for example, “is the Kevin Bacon of the Marvel universe,” Mallory said. “He knows everybody.”

Devising the chart was a unique experience, Mallory said. Instead of sitting at his computer, he made an early version of the chart, stretching out a sheet of paper several feet wide, drawing structures on the paper and picking points at which to start. He’d write a name down, find a connection to another character, write that character down, and so on.

“My family got kind of a kick from seeing me on my hands and knees on this long scroll of paper, making little dots and running and looking at a dozen different books, and then running back and scrawling some more lines,” he said.
Mallory also has another new book out, “Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror.” Both are published by Universe, an imprint of Rizzoli. A pop culture authority, Mallory is also known for his books and articles on animation.

As a kid, the 53-year-old Mallory doted on comics and cartoons.

“It was such a wonderful time to grow up, and it stuck.”