Kamandi was a post-apocalyptic story where the world's last human fought against legions of mutant animals. Hilgart says Jack Kirby's 1974 world map only hints at some of the craziness from the comic book. "You have these mad stories where Kamandi battles with radioactive tiger people. Kirby made up a lot of crazy shit, especially in the 70s."

For a destroyed, fictional world, Krypton garners a lot of fan interest. This map shows the planet's eastern hemisphere, with Superman's birth city of Kryptonopolis. Compared to the geography in some other comic franchises, Krypton has remained fairly consistent.

Batman's habitat what rearranged every couple of years. This 1968 cutaway of the Bat Cave is relatively basic, but later maps were a lot more detailed.

This 1995 landscape view of the Bat Cave introduces a lot of new details, like the wax gallery of villains. It also rearranges the placement of staple fixtures, like the Batmobile and Batman's giant souvenir penny.

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were particularly committed to expanding their creations' mythologies. This "accurate, true to scale" map from a 1965 issue of The Mighty Thor gave readers a "god's-eye view" of his home city of Asgard. Unfortunately, the shopping center is not pictured.

Back before he was chasing Betty and Veronica, Archie Andrews was the pre-adolescent leader of his neighborhood gang, the West Side Warriors. He used this 1958 map from Little Archie #9 to devise tactics against a rival gang, the South Side Serpents.

Hilgart believes DC Comics made some unfortunate geographical choices for its cities. "Metropolis is in Delaware, and Gotham City is in south Jersey. It's just counterintuitive", he said. Metropolis, in fact, started out in the Midwest, and was originally modeled after Cleveland.

Hilgart says Marvel succeeded by having its heroes live in real world cities. "When an attack happens in * The Fantastic Four*, it happens in Manhattan." In 1963, the Fantastic Four fought to free the island from Namor, half-blooded prince of the Atlantis.

Hilgart often wonders who came up with some of the crazy details in old comics, like this 1965 map of the Fantastic Four's headquarters. "Like, was there some editorial decision, or did Stan Lee just say 'Jack, draw a full-scale picture of the Baxter Building'?"

Compared to the science-and-rocket filled Baxter Building, the conference rooms and cubicles of the Justice League of America's headquarters (1971) seem pretty bland. At least it's on a satellite.

Walt Kelly's Pogo often used creative artwork to tell stories. Kelly drew this two-page map to illustrate all the different characters of the Pogofenokee Swap.

Will Eisner's The Spirit was a blue-collar detective from the early days of comics. Eisner was revolutionary for his visual devices, like this 1947 cutaway that uses a house's walls instead of panels to build suspense around a murder.

Maps were also useful for telling origin stories, like this 1962 one from Superboy explaining the various routes Krypton's last survivors took to Earth.