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[bjork]

Back in the late 80s, Marvel had the monthly "Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe" that was basically like short essays for each character in the Marvel Universe, accompanied with like a short bio file and various artwork of the character standing, and the character in action. To my knowledge, there were 20 issues that ended with a four or five issue run that covered deceased characters.

Was this ever released in a TPB or a hardback form?

Also, since the series I'm thinking of was 87 or 88, have they revised this and run a newer version of the Marvel Universe at all? I'd think all the revamps and reintroduced series and stuff would make it tough to do, but I always enjoyed reading the bios of all these characters.

 

[FnordChan]

Very short version: They reprinted The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe(tm) as perfectbound collections, each containing two volumes, though I forget exactly when. The eary 90s perhaps? Either way, those are long out of print. There was also Update '90, which was pretty self explanatory; I dunno if those were ever reprinted or repackaged in any way. I have the vague notion that the Handbooks were also published as three-hole punched collections, but I could be wrong. Recently Marvel have been doing handbooks for seperate areas of continuity (i.e. X-Men Handbook, Spider-Man Handbook), but they aren't really the same thing. There are also large, hardback volumes that were recently marketed as Encyclopedias and aren't really worth mentioning.

The Handbook and variations thereof are scattered all over the net. The Marvel Directory isn't nearly as complete, but mirrors the style faithfully. The Appendix to the Handbook is a terrific compilation of truly minor characters; the Master List on the same page is exhaustive, but is only an index. Then there's the Marvel Chronology Project, which has to be seen to be properly appreciated. And so on and so forth.

FnordChan