title: Creating SVG elements without rendering them
body: <p>How can I create a function that returns a custom SVG graphic without appending it to anything? Can I create an empty selection and return that?
  What I currently have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>function makeGraphic(svgParent) {
      return svgParent.append('circle').attrs({...});
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is what I want:</p>
  
  <pre><code>function makeGraphic() {
      return d3.makeCircle?.attrs({...});
  }
  
  svgParent.append(makeGraphic());
  </code></pre>