Marvel digital timeline will suck you in
It's going to take a superhero-like effort to avoid spending the rest of the day browsing through this website celebrating 75 years of Marvel-ousness.
Marvel Comics turned 75 this year ( so did Batman, but he's DC so we'll skip that for now), and some students in France have created one super-sized birthday present for them. It's a website called Ultimate75th that compiles data from each and every year of the franchise's existence in a super-cool visual format.
The project was created by second-year students at France's Hétic school, the first school in France dedicated to Internet-based careers. The students were tasked to create the site using something known as REST API, which basically means they had to use Marvel's own site architecture. The students themselves must have a touch of the super-human in them because they completed the project in just four days.
Take a dive in and you'll see why that's so remarkable. The site's basic interface is a calendar. Click on a year and you'll get a visual representation of how many Marvel heroes and series existed at that time along with a breakdown of new and existing series and heroes.
You'll also get a brief bit of trivia. For example, 1986 says: "Howard the Duck, a quick-witted talking fowl introduced in the 70s by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik, becomes the first Marvel character to be featured in a theatrical film since Captain America in the 1940s. The iconic George Lucas produced the movie while Lea Thompson and Tim Robbins starred."
Hover over the heroes and click, and you get taken to a page that shows you all the existing heroes at the time in nifty little circles. Click on those, and you get awesome bios of each one. Hover over the series and click and you'll get comic book covers from each. Clicking those gives a complete profile of the series.
The site pulls you in like a light-gobbling black hole as you explore the rich history of one of the most well-loved comics creators in history, so it's going to take some true super powers to stop browsing and get back to work. Don't say we didn't warn you.
(Via Design Taxi)