Customer Reviews

Marvel Encyclopedia Volume 5: Marvel Knights

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Volume 5 of Marvel's Encyclopedia series is dedicated to none other than the Marvel Knights. Backstories, crossovers, one-shots, mini-series, and just about everything else are revisited and re-told on Daredevil, the Punisher, Blade, and Ghost Rider. The encyclopedia is painfully comprehensive; featuring stats and vitals on virtually every character that has ever had a role in any comic relating to the aforementioned characters. The book begins with a few pages dealing with the film adaptations of Daredevil, the Blade trilogy, and the recently released Punisher film, as well as the long overdue Ghost Rider film which is in development. As comprehensive as this is though, there are plenty of typos, spelling errors, etc. that has also plagued the previous Marvel encyclopedias. That aside though, any devoted fan of Daredevil, the Punisher, Blade, or Ghost Rider should give this a look nontheless.

I've been impressed with Marvel's Marvel Encyclopedia series (I not had the "pleasure" of seeing the much derided Hulk volume yet) but I find myself less than impressed with this book.

The reason is the entries have been split into three sections: Daredevil and associations, The Punisher and associations and, for want of a better description Midnight Sons dealing with the supernatural in the Marvel Universe.

But it's a system that fails. A quick scan of the three sections will probably reveal why without me saying any more. There's just too much overlap between Daredevil and The Punisher. Why does the Kingpin get a massive entry in the Daredevil section, but nothing at all in the Punisher section? Wouldn't that confuse a reader who is only familiar with The Kingpin from Punisher comics? There's loads of other crossover characters who find themselves pressed into once section over the other; Bullseye, Nick Fury, Spider-Man. Even Marvel Knights (the team, which actually features The Punisher as well as Daredevil) is pushed into the Daredevil section. While the Midnight Sons section has a more logical split on the whole, it suffers from an ill-defined title (Its just labelled "Blade and Ghost Rider A-Z") which sells it sort of its ambition. Entries such as Doctor Strange, the Darkhold Dwarf, Hellstorm and Marie Leveau have a much more varied and rich history than just being associated with "Blade and Ghost Rider". But even here, crossovers with the other sections persist: Black Widow was a member of the Champions with the Blaze Ghost Rider and Blackheart had a memorable run-in with Daredevil (and indeed his first appearance was in the pages of Daredevil).

I simply cannot understand why it was decided to split the book up into three sections. A single comprehensive A-Z would have been much better and logical. If need be, each entry could have had a graphical symbol to identify which character the entry was most associated with, but splitting the enyclopedia just doesn't work for me. So I've dropped a star.

Still, when all is said and done, its still the definitive reference work, and still worth getting.

This is a good collectors item, the only drawback is that their could be more artwork. But, overall a good book.