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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
X Marks the Spot, August 18, 2008
This review is from: Marvel Encyclopedia Volume 2: X-Men HC (Hardcover)
The Marvel universe is vast. It is filled with many heroes and villians, past and present. One of the largest parts of the Marvel Universe is the X-Men and their family of groups and associations(Alpha Flight, Hellfire Club, New Mutants, Starjammers, etc).
To be honest, sometimes you can not tell the characters without a dictionary or a score card. Comics used to be so simple. Storylines these days are interconnected and entwined that you need a book like this to make sense of who is who. so now you need an encyclopedia like this to remember the character's back stories and histories.
This book is a nice gift for any X fans of any age...and helpful to anyone new to the X-Men universe. It is well done and well illustrated. You can understand this universe of characters (heroes and villians) and even the danger room better than if you are reading the comics itself.
Is it worth a thirty dollar price tag? Sure if you want learn all about the X-man Universe! After reading this Encyclopedia, I am ready to start reading the XMEN comics again!
Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD
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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better than expected, but..., April 18, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Marvel Encyclopedia Volume 2: X-Men HC (Hardcover)
The number of entries in this collection is huge, basically making up almost all the characters in the X-men universe. The character considered the more important one gets more pages than the other (e.g. Cyclops, Wolverine, etc. get two pages while some get only one. Inactive characters get only like a fraction of a page. That is, in some pages, there is more than one character entry). I really don't like this idea since the inactive characters get less attention (like Rachel Summers) while excess characters (like the X-statix members) get one page per character. Just because a certain character is more active at present than the other it doesn't necessarily imply that he has played a more crucial role in the X-men continuity. I mean, I really doubt if an offshoot title like X-statix could have an impact on the Marvel universe greater than what Rachel has made. This could make people think that the characters with a longer bio are more significant than the other character that has a shorter one (which goes to show that a book that's updated doesn't always make it better than the older ones). And since the entries here are arranged by character names, you'll have a hard time figuring out the events that took place in the X-Men continuity. You won't know much about the Dark Phoenix Saga, X-Cutioner's Song, Phalanx, Brood Saga, Mutant Massacre, Siege Perilous, etc. because there are no individual entries for the major events. You have to gather pieces of information of these events from individual character entries. In my opinion, a better way of understanding the X-Men continuity is by understanding the storylines more so than the characters (i.e. knowing when a certain event occurred with respect to the other event (especially since X-Men continuity can be convoluted at times) as well as how the event occurred). Understanding the character would have to follow later. So what do I suggest?
1. Get Peter Sanderson's Ultimate X-men guidebook first. It's cheaper, more reader-friendly, and it will provide you with better understanding of the events in the Marvel Universe more than this book could ever do.
2. If you want more depth on character biography (since Peter Sanderson's book is more like a scrap book (in a good sense, that is)), get this book too, though I have to admit that the depth on the character bio of this book may not be enough for the extremely hardcore fans. Still, nothing beats the character bios in websites...
3. And while you're into Marvel guidebook shopping spree, you might as well get the Science of the X-Men book for the most entertaining science book there is right now. :D
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A necessary evil..., November 16, 2005
This review is from: Marvel Encyclopedia Volume 2: X-Men HC (Hardcover)
-What is it? As the name implies, it is a guide to the X-Men and their corner of the Marvel Comics universe that is almost essential to any one who is a long-term or recent fan of Marvel's mutants. It is also a short-sighted marketing tool.
-The Good: The structure of the book is so tidy it's almost obsessive-compulsive. The first section is all current, give or take, X-Men; next come the Acolytes, Alpha Flight, and so on, with a miscellaneous grouping towards the end. The selection of artwork is reason enough to buy the book- a brilliant and breath-taking collection that runs the gauntlet of virtually every person ever paid money to draw the X-Men.
-The Bad: Although the vast majority of the X-pantheon is included, it is more of a quick reference than a full-blown rundown of the history of each character, group or milestone event. This however, is understandable due to the vast ocean of characters they must deal with, but Marvel rubbed salt in the wound by going out of its way to focus on the way of things as they were the exact month the X-encyclopedia was published, to the point where it actually becomes misleading. Examples: X-Factor (along with X-Force and most other mutant spin-off groups) is totally absent from the book, and whenever it was impossible to overlook something X-Factor did the original X-Men were credited with out any clarification or mention that the 5 founding X-Men at one time formed their own team separate from the X-Men. X-Force is similarly referred to not by name but as either a strike force or as the New Mutants, and Cable is only referred to as Nathan Summers.
Also characters such as the X-Statics (the major space given these clowns is the primary reason NOT to buy the book) and even Alpha Flight take up quite a lot of space (many members get full-page descriptions), even though they are not directly related to the X-Men. Meanwhile characters such as Rachael Summers/Phoenix II (also, Generation X's fate requires a bit of detective work to piece together) that have been along for a number of years who were and are still relevant to the overall on going story were heavily marginalized or given only a third or quarter of a page. There are quite a few characters (and teams) left out all together, even ones that were previously headliners (ex-Deadpool, who at least gets a foot note in the Fantastic Four's guide; and none of Excalibur's foes are included).
Yet another failing is in the entries themselves. There is little correlation between what is written from one entry to the next (ex- Mystique appears a lot in the book yet her entry cuts off with out any recent information, but other entries allude to the fact that she has died, but she apparently had not), or the entries only cover the basics without telling anything about the actual history of the character as seen in the comics (ex-Nightcrawler's entry makes no mention of Excalibur). Finally, the entries for some of the teams seem to go out of their way to be as vague as possible, and groups such as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Hellfire Club, which both have had many complex incarnations, do not include much detailed information to sort any of this out.
Oh, and the Index in the back lists incorrect page numbers quite a bit also.
-Why one should buy it: The X-Men have a pantheon of characters that almost dwarfs that of Greek mythology. No matter how long you have been reading the book, you WILL eventually stumble across some one and ask you self, "who the heck is this and why do they seem so familiar?" This is why the X-Men Encyclopedia is necessary. Also, anyone who likes to make the mutants subjects of their artwork, there is not any other resource better for a variety of every style and artists, from the sublime to just plain goofy, that has graced the pages of the X-Men, etc..
-Why one should NOT buy it: If you are only buying this to get a full history of the X-Men without purchasing every graphic novel ever printed, or if you are an old fan returning after a long period away from the X-universe, this book will not only lack any helpful information in that regard, it will only make you angry at re-writing past events. It is intentionally vague and provides very little history of the X-Men, but at the same time gives ample space to mostly irrelevant characters (the X-Statics) and entries present conflicting or partial information at times. In essence, it will only get you up to snuff on what happened in 2002-2003, more or less. As I said before, this short-sighted focus actually made the book horribly dated only a few months after it was published.
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