Marvel's Avengers: No Surrender Revives the Superhero Handbook

Marvel’s latest comic book event No Surrender is in full swing, with the second installment of the storyline, Avengers #676, hitting shelves last week. In the new issue, two sinister squads arrive on Earth to do battle: The Black Order, and The Lethal Legion. Most comic fans are familiar with The Black Order because of their prominent role in various big events in the past five years, not to mention the fact that a paired down version of this squad will appear in Marvel Studios’ upcoming blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War.

However, The Lethal Legion hasn't been around for more than half a decade, so it’s rather perfect that following the chapter's cliffhanger last page, we were treated to an Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe-style profile titled The Assembly.

Although it's only a single page, Marvel manages to cram in basic info about each member of both teams. This got us thinking, whatever happened to the good ol’ Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, not to mention DC Comics' answer to it, Who’s Who?

In 1982 Marvel’s EiC Jim Shooter tasked editor Mark Gruenwald with putting together a guide that would provide readers with the stats and origins of their favorite heroes and villains. Gruenwald took the concept a step further by including important locations, weapons, hardware, and paraphernalia. The format he established was one third of a page for vital statistics and history, and two thirds for an original illustration of the character, which was usually handled by the artist most associated with the hero or villain. This series was christened Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (OHOTMU from here on out) and it started the comic handbook trend.

A page from Marvel's *Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe*

The first OHOTMU series ran for 15 issues and ended in 1984. From 1985-88 Marvel published a second run that updated and added to the initial A-Z guide. These comics were differentiated from each other by the addition of Deluxe Edition to the OHOTMU title. The popularity of these compendiums saw Marvel create similar handbooks for its high-selling licensed titles like Conan, G.I. Joe and Transformers. OHOTMU continued in one form or another right up until 1993. However, at this point the demand for guidebooks dwindled, and the line was put on hiatus for more than a decade.

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A two-issue Wolverine Encyclopedia was released in 1996, the precursor to the Marvel Encyclopedias that were released between 2002-04. While densely packed with characters, these hardcover companion books had a different layout than the classic OHOTMU format. They tended to give the entries less room and rarely had original artwork. Luckily, the renewed interest in encyclopedic guides also meant the return of OHOTMU.

To supplement the Marvel Encyclopedia set, they published 20 oneshots from 2004-05 that focused on character groupings like the X-Men and Avengers, as well as other lines like Marvel Knights and the Ultimate Universe. Apparently the market was once again ripe for this type of offering as 2006 saw the release of a 12-issue series titled All-New OHOTMU and was even followed up by a quick Update series and more oneshots in 2007.

By 2008 Marvel had built up such an extensive library of characters, that it took twelve 240-page OHOTMU hardcover books to cover them all. Then there was a five-issue series that ran from 2010-11 that included the multitude of brand new and missed characters. With 100 entries per book and around 60 per comic, that's 1500 heroes, baddies, supporting characters, locations, vehicles and power items! This era was a high water mark for the title. There were also a plethora of one-shot guides around this time that did not bare the OHOTMU banner. These included companion issues to big events and crossovers like House of M, World War Hulk and Marvel Zombies.

Since 2011, Marvel has only released a handful of reference one-shots. In 2015, it did give us the Avengers Now! Handbook: The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Returns, as well as the Secret Wars: Official Guide to the Marvel Multiverse, and in 2016 we got the All-New, All-Different Marvel Universe. But it’s been slim pickings for OHOTMU fiends over the last couple of years.

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Now, we couldn't give you the history of OHOTMU and not cover DC’s response, Who’s Who. The layout and format of this series was very similar to OHOTMU with only slight tweaks. The line was launched in 1985 and ran for an impressive 26 issues until 1987. DC took another page from Marvel’s book (pun intended) when they did a guide for their most popular licensed title, Star Trek. There was also multi-issue updates to Who’s Who in 1987 and 1988, followed by a hole-punched Who's Who magazine in the early ‘90s. However, the title was cancelled in 1993 and DC opted to try something new next.

In the late ‘90s DC launched their most enduring reference series Secret Files and Origins. For more than a decade the line offered readers more insight into characters and storylines with short features and profiles. There was also 2003’s JLA companion miniseries titled JLA-Z. But while fans were happy to see DC do a Who’s Who-style comic book again, the run only consisted of three issues.

Most recently, in 2015, DC produced one of the most in-depth companion oneshots in comic book history: Grant Morrison’s Multiversity Guidebook. This epic compendium is an index of the DCU's 52 Earths, filled with basic info about each reality's version of the Justice League. Plus, the all original profile art is done by A-list artists like Gary Frank, Bryan Hitch, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and many more.

A lot of comic titles and trends from the past have been resurfacing as of late. So, here's to hoping The Black Order and Lethal Legion profile in Avengers #676 is just the beginning of a reference book renaissance. We can undoubtedly all agree Rebirth, and even just Metal alone, deserve the Who’s Who treatment, and if No Surrender continues to deliver, it might need an entire one-shot of its own to tell the players apart from one another.