Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe

The comic book universe is adventurous, mystifying, and filled with heroes, villains, and cosplaying Comic-Con attendees. This book by one of Wired magazine's art directors traverses the graphic world through a collection of pie charts, bar graphs, timelines, scatter plots, and more. Super Graphic offers readers a unique look at the intricate and sometimes contradictory storylines that weave their way through comic books, and shares advice for navigating the pages of some of the most popular, longest-running, and best-loved comics and graphic novels out there. From a colorful breakdown of the DC Comics reader demographic to a witty Venn diagram of superhero comic tropes and a Chris Ware sadness scale, this book charts the most arbitrary and monumental characters, moments, and equipment of the wide world of comics.

Tim Leong is an award-winning art director and designer. He's currently the Design Director at Entertainment Weekly magazine, and was previously Design Director at Fortune magazine, Director of Digital Design at WIRED magazine, and Design Director at Complex magazine. During Tim's run at Complex, Kanye West said: "I really think Complex is taking the cover game to another level; these are all history in the making." And that has to count for something, right? He's also the founder of the Eisner-award losing Comic Foundry magazine. His first book, Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe is published by Chronicle Books. He also writes his author bios in third person.