Um grupo de ciêntistas investigou as propriedades das interacções entre os personagens da Marvel, argumentando que estas relações desenvolvidas entre os autores de banda desenhada, sem qualquer coordenação deliberada, partilham algumas propriedades com as redes de ciêntistas colaboradores ou outras redes sociais. Fica o abstract do artigo:

We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of "real-life" collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics.