Marvel Encyclopedia

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is an encyclopedicguide which details the fictional universe featured in Marvel Comics publications. The original 15-volume series was published in comic book format in 1982, followed by sporadic updates. OriginJim Shooter, Marvel's then , conceived the idea of envisioning a guide detailing statistics much in the manner of those found upon the back of baseball cards. This initial project was to be called The Marvel Super-Specifications Handbook (the eventual title incorporating the term "Marvel Universe" was appropriated from Al Milgrom, who used it as a working title for the anthology series Marvel Fanfare). Shooter appointed Mark Gruenwald editor of the project, and Gruenwald developed the project to include all aspects of the Marvel Universe, although he noted it was not comprehensive. In addition to Gruenwald, contributing writers on the initial volume were Marvel editors Mike Carlin, Eliot R. Brown, and Peter Sanderson. Gruenwald brought in Josef Rubinstein to be the sole inker of the project because he felt Rubinstein was best able to make the characters easily recognizable and to subvert his own style to that of the handbook's var