Marvel's The Avengers Encyclopedia

DK books are always excellent. As a fan of The Avengers growing up, I was thrilled to see a book of this magnitude published. This book is huge in size, scope, and weight! The pages are clean, and the characters really pop in vivid color on the panels within. I'd been reading The Avengers comics since the 1980's when artist John Byrne penciled for the title, and I stopped in the mid 1990's when Marvel was getting carried away with all of their cross-over stories - and special cover variants. I'm pretty knowledgeable about The Avengers during those times, so I don't know how comprehensive the encyclopedia really is? I did notice one glaring omission of the Beast though, which is an absolute shame. Despite Beast being a founder of The X-Men, he was most certainly an Avenger as well. If there are other missed entries, I'm not really aware of them. I know Thing and Wolverine were even a part of The Avengers at one point, but sadly there's not much about them in this book at all.The book has organized it's information in a very peculiar way, it's formatted into chapters by hero power sets. It starts off with superhuman powers, then technologically altered heroes, then mystical heroes, etcetera and so forth. Important story lines involving the team are added throughout the chapters; No clue if they're in any chronological order though. While I understand what the author was doing, it makes referencing any hero (or story line) of this encyclopedia a chore. The heroes aren't even alphabetized within the chapters that were written either. This organizational method is a beast of it's own (pun intended).Overall this is an excellent book, and one that I think any fan of The Avengers should read - if not at least own. It's worth getting, especially if you can find it at a significant discount. Sadly the book isn't all-inclusive or extensively comprehensive with it's heroes roster & story lines, despite the number of pages. I still highly recommend the book for any fan & collector. Excelsior! ツ

On the plus side, this book covers many, many great Marvel characters. The layouts for the individual entries are great, with quality illustrations, pretty concise synopses of character histories, and in general a decent explanation of each character's powers and abilities. The two-page spreads of important storylines are especially well done.The layout of the book is a mess, however. Entries are broken down into six broad categories of character abilities (one section is for Avengers and villains with powers, one is for the technologically enhanced, one for magical characters, etc.) That's an unusual enough choice, but even within those categories, entries are thrown in a very haphazard order. For something billing itself an "encyclopedia" there's no easy way to reference an entry for a particular character without flipping back to the index every single time (and the index is so full even that is not a quick reference.)My biggest complaint is the missing characters. There has been internet gossip that the comics publishing wing of Marvel have been deliberately downplaying the roles of the characters from the X-Men and the Fantastic Four because of Marvel films lack of the cinematic rights to these characters. I understand that these characters are all property of a huge corporation that can manage their brand however they see fit. Regardless, it is very disappointing to have an "Avengers Encyclopedia" that has entries for obscure characters such as Silverclaw and Grandmaster, or a full eight pages dedicated to Hank Pym, and no entry whatsoever for prominent Avengers like Beast, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, or The Thing. (These characters are not completely ignored - they appear in illustrations and are mentioned as part of other character bios or storylines; they are simply not given their own entries, which is still ridiculous.)All told, it is a nice volume with a good balance of information about a wide variety of characters. Perhaps future volumes will be better organized and more comprehensive.

It came on time and it is such an awesome book for someone who loves Marvel's. I have it to my 26yr nephew for Christmas and he just loved it!! Will purchase from this company again!!

Got it love it thanks

Great quality, hard cover book.

Shipping time according schedule. The book, so so good; I can check graphic and paper quality and really I think that is a goog purchase.

Great for especialky for kids 7-11. But can be appreciated in any age range.

El libro llegó dañado, no parece ser nuevo o estuvo mal almacenado ya que esta sucio y algunas hojas deformadas. No vino la cobertura externa de la tapa dura tampoco.

I am very satisfied.

Perfect Christmas Gift.

Je suis en amour avec ce livre. Tout est dedans.

Super cool

Awesome gift!