The whole concept/category of infographics struck me us unnecessary. What started out as a few fairly novel, unique, and interesting approaches to display data

The whole concept/category of infographics struck me us unnecessary. What started out as a few fairly novel, unique, and interesting approaches to display data spiraled out of control into these absurd comic-ish designs with a few stats buried in them. I will take a nice clean table or chart over an infographic any day. Mixing 'art' and data seems to obfuscate the purpose of the two.