Doom's Data: Tracking a Transmedia Supervillain Through Data

This chapter looks at a practical application of the intersection between data and superheroes by showing how data can be collected about such characters, and how it can be used to carry out statistical analyses of how they change as they move across time and media. In doing so it demonstrates some of the practicalities involved in using a data-led approach in an area where, although several large datasets are available, these have almost always been generated in an ad hoc, undirected manner by fans.

Using the Marvel super-villain Doctor Doom as an example it discusses how a corpus of texts for analysis can be selected and explains why focusing on a smaller sample might be necessary for an in-depth examination. A methodology for describing fictional characters using a thirteen-dimensional unified catalogue of transmedia character components is described and, following a brief description of how this was employed for data entry, an in-depth analysis is conducted on one specific dimension.