The Marvel Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Characters of the Marvel Universe

I loved the DC Encyclopedia and expected the Marvel Encyclopedia to be of equal quality, so I bought it without even cracking the spine. I would expect this to be incomplete and it is: after all, there are just too many Marvel characters for one affordable volume. But in too many instances it's also inconsistent (some entries are up to date while others ignore the events of the last year or two), flat out inaccurate or incomplete. The weight that key characters are given is also arbitrary: why does Thanos (a current, key villain in many titles) get 1/6 of a page when Jarella (the Hulk's dead girlfriend from the 1970s) gets half a page. Ridiciulous. They obviously never handed this to a fan to proofread - an easy and obvious move.

Just buy the newest edition.

Great book to enjoy if your into reading Marvel comic books because you get to understand all the Marvel characters in this amazing Marvel encyclopedia.

Great book for anyone. Being an avid marvel fan I thought I knew most everything, but I have learned a lot from this book. It is a good buy.

I was expecting to see beautiful drawings inside!To be honest some are very beautiful but the most are normal and some are very old!What would it take marvel to re-draw the figuers!Anyway it is a nice book to have but heavy to read in the bathroom!One can add to his/her collection of DVD as a reference.

First and foremost: Thanos. He merit's 1/6th of a page? But a charecter like Box get's a full page?

I have always considered Thanos to be Marvel's version of Darkseid or rather Darkseid to be DC's version of Thanos.

Darkseid justifiably recieved a full page devoted to him. Thanos had to share his page with Thena, 3-d man and Flash Thompson, who got half a page.

Huh?

I was also perplexed how the Thing, on the next page only merited a single page where as Mr. Fantastic got 2 pages?

Ben Grimm is always getting shorted.

Speaking of he THing, one of my favorite, if not obscure, issues of Marvel Two In One was his issue (#11) with GOLEM.

I understand some charecters would get over looked, but there were so many obscure charecters that did, by the time I got to G, I was a bit dissappointed.

Oh Well.

Very good, if not perfect reference source. You will get a large portion of your questions answered with this book though.

A good introduction into the Marvel Comics Universe. If you are looking for a particular character, this is a great way to start.

I liked the Marvel Encyclopedia and it is very useful. However, DC Comics Encyclopedia is more in depth and talks about home bases and wars, where Marvel's does not.

The product was a Christmas gift.

It tells you alot