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By Jason Bourgeois
Love.
It's February, Valentine's Day is coming closer, and love is in the air. I'm going to give all you readers a quick view into geeky love. Wait, come back! Not like that! Just want to gush over something I really love, and looking at the calendar, I see this obsession stretches back exactly twenty years, this year.
It's well documented over the last few years, that I love the X-Men. But my real obsession with comics is information. I crave to know. Anything that can be known, I must know it. And then quickly forget it, since I can be very scatterbrained, but let's not get into that. Twenty years ago, I moved to the barren wastelands of Vermont, where there was very little to do. I was already quite into comics by this point, and I did find a few sources of comics around, back when they actually sold the things on newstands. One of the first comicbooks I ever bought with my own money, was issue 11 of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Oh man, was there tons of info in there. Especially on Spider-Man, the icon I most knew at the time. What a find for a budding geek like myself!
I devoured that issue, and any subsequent issues I could find. I took it all in. I still have that comic, and it's very destroyed from constant rereadings, as are many of the other issues. I learned so much about the Marvel Universe through those books, as well as the concurrent series, Marvel Saga, which took the previous 25 years of Marvel comics, and retold all the Marvel history chronologically, to show how everything fit together. This is why I came to prefer the MU, primarily. I just knew it all, very early on.
The books introduced me to all that needed history to enjoy the backdrop of the universe, set so many interesting, minor characters in front of me, showing me just how varied the universe was. When they put out an update in 1989, I ate that up too, and was pleased to see plans to keep these databases, both valuable to fans and creators alike, up to date. For creators, these would serve as a means of explaining all the various depictions of characters, making for one streamlined continuity, for every featured face in there. Someone could pick up the needed issue for research, read it over, and be pretty well-versed in a character, and if they would be workable in stories they had plans, and know what their status was, in general.
Sadly, the OHOTMUs, as they've been known amongst the fan community, hit a bit of a bump in the '90s, like much of the industry. The produced what was known as the Master Edition. These books were collections of pages, punched to fit in three-ringed binders, with a three imaged rotational view of each character on the front of the page, and a bunch of details on the back. Sadly, since they only had one page per character, the information ended up being rather sparse. Instead of details on the powers, they were given 'power ratings' which were more inconsistent than not, and many characters didn't even have biographical data, since the History section was the last one given, and often ended up being left off, or truncated. I did like that they provided issue numbers for the events listed, if they were, however.
Once those were done, it would be a long time without new OHOTMUs. And personally, I think this was one of the problems with Marvel. Seriously. In the late '90s, Marvel was expanding rapidly, with books flying out left and right, and they continue to do so, growing and growing, with more characters, concepts, events, and everything piling up, and there was no quick, easy references for all these things, and everything happening to the already established characters. Creators had no easy means to keep up, or find out what was up with anyone, and the most recent, good information on many, many characters, was dating back to 1986. So continuity flaws simply grew and grew, with creators not really willing to put in the needed research for stories they should be doing, and in some ways, this practice became hailed by some people. Granted, there were some creators who still would put in the legwork, most notably in my mind, Kurt Busiek, aided and abetted by his editor on Avengers and Thunderbolts in the late 90s, Tom Brevoort.
But in 2004, Marvel brought back their OHOTMUs, much to my delight, in a slightly different format. Instead of doing a straight A-Z book, not knowing if such a book would be welcomed by the fans, and unwilling to commit to a potentially lengthy run, Marvel decided to instead divide things up by teams, or themes, starting with an all X-Men book. They dealt with all the characters being featured at the time. This was a bit strange, but I think it worked, to give the book some focus, and didn't lock them into a long-term deal. It combined some of the best features of all the previous versions. The lenghy text of the older versions, which was very welcome after the misfire of the MEs, but they kept the bibliographical data from the Master Editions, in the back of the books, so you could look up referenced issues.
And now, at long last, in late January, 20 years after I first discovered the OHOTMU, Marvel began publishing an All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z edition. Unfortunately, they will be leaving out many of the major players, since they've all been covered over the past 16 months. While this may be a problem for some, I feel it makes a lot of sense. We've just had very recent updates to all those big faces in the MU, and unless there have been major changes to them I don't think they should be included. It would be wasted space in the 12 issues we've been given to cover the MU, and turn it into little more than a reprint of the last year. They have also opted to not put anyone in that hasn't been updated much since the old series, since they are publishing the original 15 issue series from the early 80s, which is out now, and sitting right here next to me, as well as the Deluxe Edition in a three-volume set. Again, a smart decision, to save space, since such characters are covered in easily accessible volumes.
With all those people out of the way, the new A-Z edition can cover all those characters and events that have come out since '86. While the A-Z may not be truly, completely comprehensive, with the past year of team/theme books, and the Essentials volumes of the older books, truly make for a complete guidebook to the Marvel characters, and a much needed collection at that, and I am very glad to have these things back on the shelves. In addition to all that, there will be four "Legacy" volumes, highlighting characters and concepts from each of the last four decades; the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, showing characters as they were in each of those time frames, and anyone else important to them, that couldn't be fit into the A-Z book.
And so, my love affair with exhaustive Marvel information continues, for at least another year, filling my heart with geeky joy and love.
I'll be back with some hate next month.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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