Alright, I'm drawing a complete blank today.

Back in the eighties, there were a series of Marvel books that were essentially a guide to every character in the Marvel universe.

I'm sure someone knows what they were called, but I can't remember for the life of me.

Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

Or something along those lines.

I think what you're looking for is "Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe". This was in alphabetical order of the characters to Marvel Univ. There were about 3 volumes I think, one of them in binder format

There was also "Official Index to...", and this covered certain series: Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers (2 volumes), X-Men (2 volumes), Marvel Team-Up, Fantastic Four. I highly recommend these if you want detailed synopsis of the first issues of that series.

If I remember correctly, there were two runs of the Official Handbook: the first ran around fourteen monthly issues, a large chunk of which were later collected in trades, and a second series dubbed the Expanded Edition, which lasted longer than the first, maxing out at sixteen or so monthly issues (I believe they needed two extra-sized issues for a Book of the Dead-type appendix, detailing all of the characters that had died.).

The real question is which came first, Marvel's Official Handbook or DC's Who's Who?

Thanks guys. I appreciate the quick responses. I found them. Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

I wish Marvel would do these again, in this cheaper format.

It was just plain Marvel Universe

Wrong.

[img]http://server42.hypermart.net/justbears/marveluniverse3.jpg[/img]

Originally, there was The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. After that came The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition which expanded on characters and included a lot more characters. The Deluxe Edition ran 20 issues I believe. In 1989, Marvel put out The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Update '89, which was a shorter series that included characters popular at the time who hadn't been in previous editions (like Venom) or had undergone massive changes to their character.

In the early 90s, Marvel released the binder format handbook, which did not sell too well. I still see the binder format issues in quarter bins at conventions.

Getting the original and deluxe handbooks in good condition is much harder to find though, with set prices going past $60 for each on Ebay.

Marvel reprinted the Deluxe Edition in a nice tpb form at one point. Those are even harder to find.

The handbooks were the dearly departed Mark Gruenwald's pet project. As much as I would like see Marvel come out with a new version, I don't know if anyone would be willing to put in the amount of work he did to truly do the project justice.

As a side note, DC had a similar series around the same time as the Deluxe Edition called "Who's Who."

-Blah

And we have a winner. Nice summary Blah.