We demonstrate how sophisticated graph properties, such as small distances and scale-free degree distributions, arise naturally from a reinforcement mechanism on layered graphs. Every node is assigned an a-priori i.i.d. fitness with max-stable distribution. The fitness determines the node attractiveness w.r.t. incoming edges as well as the spatial range for outgoing edges. For max-stable fitness distributions, we thus obtain a complex spatial network, which we coin extremal linkage network.
