Midterm Project: Mapping Uncanny X-Men Locations

The Process

The project I chose to take on is mapping the locations of the Uncanny X-Men. The dataset that I chose to use was provided in the shared Google folder. It was the dataset that detailed the issues of the comic (250-290), the locations of the comic, and whether or not it takes place in the past, present, or future.

To get started I opened the data in Openrefine and got rid of any unnecessary columns. These columns included context, notes, and a column named column. Next, I created a text facet to determine what locations I would be able to find on the map. When this was done, I was left with about 63 locations that I would be able to realistically map. After that came the hard part. I had to check for the locations in Google Maps and find the latitude and longitude of each location. This was done so it would be easier to plot the locations on ArcGIS.

After these steps were taken now came the part where I would have to present my data. I chose to represent the data as a single place on the map, unlike a heat map that shows frequency I wanted to see where these comic locations were the most populous. Another design choice I chose to make was to make the background black. This allows easier viewing and enhances the scanability of the map. One last choice that I made was to use a custom image. This helps create a theme for the map as well as make it more visually appealing.

When applying my chosen approach to data we can start to see patterns that appear geographically. In the case of the X-Men, we can start to see where most comic issues took place in accordance with real locations in the world. The X-Men are supposed to draw parallels from many social issues in the world so seeing where they are in the world we can infer what issues they may represent. This representation relates to Digital Arts and the Humanities because once we add context to the data we can analyze and draw inferences about the subject matter. These projects allow us to analyze these topics deeper and create more meaning from locations.