Superhero films in a post-9/11 climate part 2

Following on from part 1 and before I go on to bring this topic up to date (that will be part 3) I thought this little dataset deserved some kind of visualisation. Just to prove my point that this trend is worthy of investigation and because infographics make everything better. And trilogies are ace.

So here is superhero films plotted over time for the last 35 years.

Quite clearly in the period immediately following 9/11 (in fact 2002 – 2005 as there weren’t any superhero films in 2001) there were the most films and the highest combined amount grossed at the box office. 2006 – 2010 is also a very strong period, with only one fewer films and over 3.2 billion made at the box office. But if that looks like things are in any way petering out, it has to be noted that there have already been 10 superhero films in 2011 and 12. So things continue apace but perhaps this can be put down to sequels as these do seem to be on the increase.

Note: the films I’ve chosen are from this list but with the following removed: straight-to-video, TV movies, comedies, parodies and kids films. This way I’m left with mostly ‘proper’ superhero comic book movies.