I think what was misleading on the first graph is that it isn't specific about what the number refers to.

That $54k is only drawn from wage earners. A lot of income in America comes from non-wage sources. That makes $54k a dramatic underestimate of income.

Another thing going on here is that taking the mean, rather than median, of income will give a fairly high seeming value because of the extreme high-earners in the distribution.