This is one of the best superheroe books ive ever read, very well explained and pictured, recomend it to every Marvel fan.

If you love comic books, you will love the Marvel Encyclopedia. If you're new to the whole comic book thing, you will LOVE the Marvel Encyclopedia! :) It's a great little reference to have!

I bought this for my brother for Christmas. The bookstore at the mall was selling this book for twice what I paid on Amazon! My brother loves the book and his friends even call him when they need a Marvel character question answered. My brother is 24, my husband is 37, my sons are ages 2 and 5, and they all LOVED looking through this book.

My husband & I bought this for my son's 8th birthday over two weeks ago and he won't put it down. The images are great quality and are very detailed. He is driving us crazy with all the Marvel facts. Definitely a must buy for all ages.

Received merchandise in a timely manner. And for the price we paid (half off cover) the condition of the book was good

This is one of the best books I have ever bought. If you want to learn the history of Marvel characters, then buy this book. I was basically just a Spiderman fanatic, but now I love Marvel Comics. What interesting stories and tidbits you get with this book. This one is well worth the money.

If your a comic book fan,you need this.every marvel hereo and villian ever,all in one book.Excellent background on all the main characters.I really liked the feature that lists important issues and story lines.You cant usually buy every copy,so this gave me certain issues to look for.

Fun book. If you need to get an idae of Mrvel characters, well this will help.

Being I am not a comic guy in that I don't have allot of specific character knowledge and so this book was great at the back story on each and the animations are wonderful.

As a big DC Comics fan I decided I wanted to learn more about Marvel Comics' characters. The book was very thorough and informative and is helping me do exactly what I intended.

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my husband who has taken a new hobby in comic books. I don't know anything about comic books but he said the book was good and seems accurate. He is a casual comic book reader and not a die hard so I don't know if that would make a difference.

I love this book! Even as an over sized coffee table accessory! It's gorgeous. Each character is paired with art work, a short bio, and other interesting facts. My boyfriend is a much larger comic nerd than I, so this book was purchased as a gift for him. Sure, someone with enough knowledge of the Marvel universe may find subtitle imperfections in the book, overall it's a great collection. In my opinion, any DK book you find is going to have flaws. Though that is just personal experience.

This encyclopedia y definitely the best way to know the Marvel Universe,you will answer all your questions about characters untill the year 2006, if you want to find out what happened to any hero, villian or suport character the this is the right book for you.

Essential reading for marvel fans...better, for COMIC'S FANS!
A short description and images of EVERY character showed in this book (over a 1000) made it a must-have piece for every collector!
Good texts, amazing draws, fine paper...excellent buy!

I'm mostly an X-Men fan, so this book has a lot of info that is new to me and therefore i find it very informing and entertaining.Surely it has some minor mistakes and lack of details, but the whole presentation, the printing quality and the artwork are simply perfect.After all,the Marvel Universe is so vast that one book alone could never cover it.At the end, all you get is a sincere effort,great for new readers and well worth its cost!

ordered as a christmas present....it came in excellent condition, just like as if i had gone to the book store....also arrived quickly!

I bought this book for my son who loves all of the Marvel characters. He reads it every day and is discovering many characters that he did not know previously. He especially likes all of the details and pictures. There is much detail about each character in an easy to search alphabetical order. A very complete book for Marvel lovers and those just discovering them.

This book was in perfect condition and arrived promptly. I could not have been more pleased, nor could my grandson!

If you are a fan of Marvel comics, this book provides a history of Marvel comics and in-depth of characters.

Sadly I didn't have many comic books as a kid, I missed out. So as all these Marvel movies come out I am one who wants the back story or information on where the story goes next. Where does someone like me turn in these times of crisis with 30 plus years of comics to catch up on? To the Marvel Encyclopedia of course. There are great looking pictures and descriptions for each character or group and the bigger the character or group the more pictures and information on back story is available. It is impossible to get all those years of comics into one book for sure but this is a great place to start for someone who isn't sure where to start but has a new interest. I highly recommend for those of you who like Marvel comics. The product did it's job for me I'm now hooked on reading comic books.

In this age of wikipedia, you need chutzpah to produce a book with "encyclopedia" in the title. This is especially true when your book is as full of errors, typos and omissions as is The Marvel Encyclopedia.

I think the omissions are the worst thing about the book. I was disappointed to find some of my favorite characters did not have entries. ROM, X-23 and the Micronauts were all missing. Others characters were included in a group's member listing, but did not have their own entry or even an illustration (e.g. many of the earlier Guardians of the Galaxy). A few characters had an entry inappropriately small compared to their importance to the Marvel universe. Thanos, a major cosmic villain, had the smallest entry size (about 1/8 of a page or smaller).

My other major complaint is the sloppiness of the illustration editing. Often images are mirrored with hilarious side-effects. Nick Fury's main illustration has him wearing a patch over his right eye. The Human Torch is wearing a backward's 4 in one image. I know that images are often reversed to produce a pleasing layout and to draw the eye through the copy flow. For example, you might want to avoid pictures of people looking off the edge of the page. But you wouldn't want to sacrifice subject matter for the layout!

The layout decisions made in this book make me think the layout and editing were done by people so unfamiliar with the subject matter they could not even identify when reversing an image might detract from its meaning or importance. This book, like most DK books, was published in China. I wonder if it was also layed out and edited over there (despite the claims on the credits page, which list prominent Marvel editors)? This would certainly explain the poor editing quality and silly layout choices.

Overall, a fun book to thumb through, but frustrating and disappointing once you start looking at it closely. NOT worth the money.

This was a very good book, some typos but I'm sure with some proper revision it can become quite an excellent source of information on all your favorite marvel characters!

MY SON IS GOING TO BE THRILLED WITH THIS BOOK ON CHRISTMAS, THIS BOOK IS TRULY WONDERFUL. I AM VERY HAPPY THAT I RECIEVED IT VERY QUICK, AND THE BOOK IS JUST GREAT. THANK YOU FOR RESPONDING SO QUICKLY.
I KNOW HE WILL BE THRILLED TO GET THIS TO ADD TO HIS COLLECTION. THANKS MUCH AGAIN KATHLEEN SERWIN

My 4.5 yr old son loves super heroes so when I ran across this at the store I had to get it for xmas. Flipping thru it I know I'll be spending endless nights reading it to him for story time before bed.
My only hope is he doesn't get too obsessed with it.

As for accuracy I have no idea, never got into reading comics as a kid except for those in the Sunday paper.

As for graphics layout etc they are all excellent.

Though the book is imformative, the bios are very limited. There are no scales to properly determine strength and intelligence. Also there are a lot of typos, leading me to believe that they didn't care much when they created this. If you want a short overview on marvel characters then this book is for you, otherwise don't bother.

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.

The book is well illustrated and has exhaustive description of each character of Marvel Comic Books.

Like any Marvel fan I was very excited about getting my hands on this encyclopedia, only to be sorely disappointed by the amount of errors found within it's pages. Error examples include: page 46, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, an image of Nightcrawler is found under a listing for Black Tom Cassidy. Page 212 , an image of the Shiar imperial guardsman Nightside is shown under the character listing for Nightshade. Page 171 An image of the Asgardian character Lorelei is shown under the character listing for the Savage Land mutate of the same name. These are few example of the many errors throughout the book.

There isn't enough information on individual characters. (There are a lot of them, and there are pictures, but the pictures take up some much space that there's none left for details.)

I have a hard time recommending this book. There are plenty of Official Guides to the Marvel Universe out now that have more information, and are likely more accurate. Typos and mislabled pictures are frustrating for someone who knows the history well, and misleading for those that may not. That being said, it has a picture for everyone, and it is a nice book to flip through. If you are a Marvel-phile like myself, it really isn't a bad pickup. If you want to know more about the history of your favorite characters - I'd look other places instead.

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.

This book has the best illustrations, not too mention the history behind each Marvel Character. Great book for anyone

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.

Tengo 45 años y crecí leyendo en España los tebeos de la Marvel en blanco y negro. Tener ahora todo el universo Marvel en mis manos es una gozada. Es como volver a una oparte de mi infancia.
Sencillamente espectacular!

The bottom line is that I love the characters of the Marvel Universe and this book rocks the house. However, I feel that the DC Encyclopedia is superior in every way.
My main criticism is the amount of space given to certain characters. The Mad Thinker and Alicia Masters get almost a full page each - while Black Bolt, The Rhino, and Deadpool each get a whopping 1/8th of a page. Kind of a drag!

book is the best b. ive been up so many nights reading it its crazy

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.

If I could've given 10 stars, I would! Without going into detail, I have to say that not only was I satisfied and thrilled by this book, but I would have to say that it is possibly the greatest book every put together (including the King James Bible)!

It covers the whole of the Marvel Universe from their very beginning and treats the superhero/super-villain entries (complete with beautiful artwork) as though they were as real as any of us who grew up reading about them (and continue to read about them) felt they always were!

This book is a must and is worth every penny and then some!

I bought the Marvel Encyclopedia as an anniversary/Valentine's day gift for my husband. A few years prior I had given him the DC Encyclopedia which he loved. When I saw the Marvel version I knew it was a must have. It is a beautiful book! Unless you are a die hard fan, you probably won't know 3/4 of the characters...that was me. I highly recommend this for the comic book fan. It's a great collection.

My son (10 years old) seems to refer to this book on a daily basis. It's like a Bible of superheroes! He very much enjoys reading the bios of all the characters! The size of the book does not deter him from using it!

Pretty good. Like the DC version, very well done. But I really hoped to see more of the earlier artwork by the original artists for the older chartacters.

I bought the Marvel Encyclopedia for my 8 year grandson and he loves it. Everthing is in alphebetical order so it is easy to find the superheros he is looking for. The illustrations are colorful and the information is easy to read. Because it is so user friendly he is reading about superheros he has never heard of before and loves it.

Well designed, nicely laid-out with a generally high standard of artwork (although some of the older material is of a much lower resolution than one might expect to see these days) and certainly good value for money in terms of how much book you get for your buck.

But this encylopedia is depressingly full of errors, both typos and factual inaccuracies, particularly in the choice of illustrations, their annotations and the various character summaries. Some of it might be obvious only to fanboys (no-one other than a reader of "Alpha Flight" would know that the entry for Laura Dean is accompanied by a picture of Zuzha Yu), but even novices will wonder whether entirely human crime boss The Rose should be described as having "feathers", why the main illo of Johnny Storm has him wearing a backwards 4 on his chest, or why an "eleven-year-old" Jean Grey is depicted as an infant.

Unlike previous reviewers, I think the balance between well-known and obscure characters is about right. No single volume could ever reasonably cover every Marvel character. But the structure of what's here is questionable. Looking at associated entries, it becomes obvious to the reader that The Sworsdman has had an extraordinarily convoluted history, yet his own description is suprisingly terse. Damien Hellstrom gets two separate entries (one as Hellstorm, another as Son of Satan) that are virtually identical, yet the authors seem to have gotten hopelessly muddled on the difference betwen Adam Warlock and the New Mutant called Warlock, to the extent that the latter has been overlooked, despite the fact he's cross-referenced in other entries.

This book certainly should have been more thoroughly proof-read before publication, but the fact that so many points of Marvel lore got past Tom Brevoort and Tom deFalco (who was Marvel's editor-in-chief when much of what's described was in print!) is unforgivable.

this item that i purchased from amazon.com was great. it got to on time and it was everything that i needed. it has lots of information on marvel charecters and would a great book for any fan.

My buddy recently purchased the Marvel Encyclopedia and lent it to me, as he frequently lends me comics I don't have (and I, vice versa, to him). I both dug the thing and was sorely disappointed at the same. The layout is fantastic -- the chosen pictures extraordinary with old-panel word balloons remastered -- with an excellent combination of old school artwork and new. The typeface is also well done.

However, when one gets into the nitty gritty, one'll be finding himself going "Huh??" quite often. And this is mostly the fault of lousy proofreading. To be sure, a comics novice would most likely in no way be able to pick up on a lot of these blunders. But being that I was heavily into Marvel Comics in the 70s and early 80s gave me a good vantage point from which to judge.

IRON MAN
Let's start with my favorite hero, Iron Man. For the most part, the writer (Andrew Darling, one of several contributors) did a good job. Obviously the writers cannot cover every tidbit of a character's career or the volume would be over 1,000 pages, possibly more. Some things do have to be omitted. But most of Shellhead's key moments made it into print. The main proofreading blunder in the Iron Man section (a two-page spread, by the way; I'd expect no less!) was in the "Old Flames" segment at upper right. Long-time Tony Stark girlfriend Bethany Cabe is listed, but there's just one problem -- it's not Bethany pictured. It's [volume 3] Tony Stark girlfriend Rumiko Fujikawa! Doh! Rumiko didn't make the list but should have -- easily so over very briefly-noted-in-IM-lore squeeze Sunset Bain. In addition, you can see the influence that current Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada has; in the "Essential Storylines" segment, Iron Man vol. 3 #27-30 are listed. Guess why? Quesada wrote 'em. No true-blue Iron Fan would list those issues if they had to name three "essential" Iron Man stories. Unbelievably omitted is the one storyline virtually all Iron Fans would list as a must-have: The Armor Wars (Iron Man #225-232). And one of the "essential" stories contains a glaring error: Iron Man #153-156 are listed as "alcohol stuggle issues." URRNT! Not even close! Those are pretty much one-shot stand alone issues at a time when the title was in creative team transition (David Michelinie and Bob Layton, Iron Man's best-ever creative team, were exiting).

WHO TO INCLUDE?
There was also the head-scratching topic of who was included in the book, and who wasn't. Recent (and lame) Iron Man adversary Tiberius Stone made the book, but, for example, occasional Shellhead foe Midas -- who was an enemy of several Marvel heroes -- did not! Huh? This was also a common complaint among the myriad Amazon reviewers. Another that stuck out for me was the ridiculous inclusion of a character named Bloodhawk who appeared in a mere two issues of the Avengers back in the late 70s. C'mon -- aren't there much more worthy characters out there??

RETCONNED OR NOT?
A little-known Marvel character called the Rocket Racer stood out for me. First, it states his first appearance was Amazing Spider-Man #172. I used to own that issue as a boy, and read Spidey's then-battles with the skateboarding crook. Here's what got me about Racer's entry: It states he "was a scientific prodigy" who "developed a superpowered skateboard which was cybernetically controlled..." Now, there's a thing in comics called "retconning" where sometimes a hero's (or villain's) origin is "redone" to make him/her more "up-to-date" for a modern audience. It's also sometimes done to correct mistakes a writer made in the past, or simply to allow for what a current writer wants to do with a hero/villain. Now, I don't know if Marvel retconned Rocket Racer or not. If they did NOT, then his origin is completely erroneous. If anyone reads those Spider-Man issues from the late 70s, you'll see that the Racer was just a common thug (but not necessarily an evil person) who made a deal with a guy called the [Terrible] Tinkerer. The deal was that the Tinkerer (a mechanical genius) would develop the Racer's skateboard and glove rockets for 50% of whatever the Racer managed to steal in his crime sprees. Chances are RR was retconned, but then why include the original first appearance without noting that his origin had changed in the summary text? It would leave interested comic collectors who may go out and search for the relevant comics scratching their heads!

SPEAKING OF FIRST APPEARANCES...
Another thing that was inconsistent was the noting of characters' first appearances in the Marvel Universe. Notwithstanding the Rocket Racer above, I noticed that the writers tended to always include a character's first ever appearance in their bio, despite the fact that they may have changed names and/or appearances [possibly] many times. For instance, Mach-4's first appearance is noted as Strange Tales #123 from 1964. However, Mach-4 is a very recent character. Rightly noted in his bio is that he started out as a character called the Beetle, who indeed surfaced around 1964. OK. All fine and dandy. However, when you read the entry on the Speed Demon, his first appearance is listed as Amazing Spider-Man #222 (1981). Later in his entry you read that he started his career as the Squadron Sinister's "Whizzer." I have that very issue! And it was Avengers #70 from 1971! So, why do the encyclopedia's authors utilize first-ever appearances pretty much 95% of the time despite what a character eventually became ... but in Speed Demon's case (among a few others) his first appearance is listed as his first appearance as Speed Demon -- when in fact he started out a decade earlier as The Whizzer?

SPEAKING OF THE WHIZZER...
One of my favorite Marvel super groups is the DC Justice League analogue Squadron Supreme. This group exists in the Marvel Universe on a parallel Earth called "Earth-S." The leader of the group, Hyperion, has his first appearance listed as Avengers #85. Not noted is that the character Hyperion's first appearance was actually 15 issues earlier in Avengers #70, just like the Whizzer/Speed Demon above. (The Squadron Sinister was retroactively patterned -- see "retconning" above -- after the Squadron Supreme by an evil higher-order cosmic being ... Marvel writers apparently decided that a good group of these heroes wouldn't be such a bad idea!) In mainstream Marvel continuity, the Squadron Supreme at one time attempted to use their powers to take over their world in what was essentially a benevolent dictatorship. When they realized this wasn't a good idea, they dismantled their programs and became "ordinary" heroes. Eventually the team was whisked away from their world (to ours) by their arch-enemy; when they made it back years later, an oligarchic compendium had assumed world control, and in a 1998 special edition issue the situation was left as the Squadron continuing to fight this compendium for the world's freedom. So it says in Hyperion's bio. However, when you read the Squadron's own bio in the Encyclopedia, it says at entry's end that "the Squadron has now successfully liberated their own world from the grip of various monolithic corporations ..."!! So which is it, Marvel?? One entry says they're still fighting (the correct entry) and another says they've won already! It's doubtful I'd have missed a follow-up issue detailing their victory over the oligarchy as I'm always on the look-out for Squadron Supreme storylines, natch.

1941: A GOOD YEAR
In the most egregious example of lousy proofreading, the year "1941" appears an inordinate amount of times as a character's first appearance. This was the year in which the famous Captain America made his first-ever appearance, but other characters ...? On page 229 of the book, both the villain Proctor and hero Prodigy's first appearances are listed as 1941! Prodigy is even listed as having his debut in Captain America Comics #1!! Proctor's first issue is correct (Avengers #344) but that issue appeared in the 1990s, not 1941 as listed!! There were several other characters erroneously listed as having their first appearance as 1941, but I didn't write their names down and I can't recall all of them at the moment. Nevertheless, the year 1941 wasn't the only boo-boo; the dates of many characters' debuts were botched. One I recall immediately was Kitty Pryde's from X-Men fame. Her debut issue number is correct, but the year listed is 1994. The correct year is 1980!

CONCLUSION
Fairly new comics fans will take delight at this book. Older fans will still dig it, but as noted will wonder how a work of this magnitude managed to get published with all the errors -- especially when Marvel bigwigs Tom Brevoort and Tom DeFalco were contributing writers!!

This encyclopedia is a really must have item for any comics fan. DK has done once more a terrific job joining Marvel's heroes and villains, exactly as they did with DC Comics not a long time ago. The graphic is outstanding and the information provided for each character - about 1000 are listed - is excellent. It is true that not every character is portrayed on the book, but I think that's not important. Spider-man, Captain America, Wolverine and the X-Men, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, Kingpin, Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom... they all there for us to browse again and again. This is in fact the ultimate Marvel reference, as another reader described it on his review of the book. I would also singularize the extraordinary work of artist Frank Cho on the wraparound of the book -- it's simply great.

If you enjoy Marvel comics, then this book is a must have!!!!! The art work is incredible and the information provided for each Superhero, and Villian is outstanding!!!!! This book is FANTASTIC.

I purchased this book for my husband for Christmas and he loves it. He is a huge Marvel comics fan and has really enjoyed looking through this book!

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.