Marvel Indexes

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wolverine7230
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Marvel Indexes

Post by wolverine7230 »

I am a big fan of the Official Index to the Marvel Universe (the newest ones), and I know that a lot of people here worked on them, and I have a few questions:

1) Was there any reason that other major heroes like Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and Hulk weren't indexed?
2) Was there any reason that in the Uncanny X-Men volume, the 1991 series of X-Men was left out, and the same for all the Spider-Man spin-offs?

I'm guessing the answer will be that Marvel were planning to publish more indexes, which leads to to my final questions:

3) Is there any plans of reviving the indexes?
4) If not, are there any draft copies that I would be able to have access to?

I just feel that it's such a shame that information like this has been restricted. Sure, the various wikis do a great job, but there is just something about having a nice book, and the fact that a lot more information is gathered in one place, where you simply have to turn a page, rather than spend significantly longer changing web-pages.

Thanks to all for all the hard work and commitment involved with making these indexes possible!

-wolverine

(And if there is any talk of reviving the Indexes, could you pass my name on to Marvel - I'd help out for free!)
loki
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by loki »

wolverine7230 wrote:I am a big fan of the Official Index to the Marvel Universe (the newest ones),
Thanks. Always nice to hear from someone who liked them.
wolverine7230 wrote: and I know that a lot of people here worked on them,
Yes, the MCP guys made massive contributions to the Index series. That's not the MCP guys bigging themselves up, btw, as I was involved with the Index but am merely an interested guest on this site - that they were invaluable contributors to the run is a simple statement of facts and acknowledgement of the hard work they put in.
wolverine7230 wrote: 1) Was there any reason that other major heroes like Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and Hulk weren't indexed?
As you rightly guessed, they were intended to hopefully be covered down the line. The next volume was pencilled in as being Hulk, DD and Nick Fury/SHIELD, but sales dropped too low and so that volume got the axe.
wolverine7230 wrote: 2) Was there any reason that in the Uncanny X-Men volume, the 1991 series of X-Men was left out, and the same for all the Spider-Man spin-offs?
Simply too many issues to cover in that volume. Again, we'd discussed going back to the X-Men in a future volume, and perhaps also covering all the shorter run spin-offs that connected to it - so the likes of X-Factor, New Mutants/X-Force, etc would have their own volumes, but miniseries for Iceman, Nightcrawler, etc. would all get covered alongside adjectiveless X-Men. Similarly for Spider-Man's other series. But these were only ideas being spitballed and nothing came of them.
wolverine7230 wrote:I'm guessing the answer will be that Marvel were planning to publish more indexes, which leads to to my final questions:

3) Is there any plans of reviving the indexes?
None that we are aware of. That could change, of course, but I wouldn't hold up huge hopes for anything in the foreseeable future.
wolverine7230 wrote: 4) If not, are there any draft copies that I would be able to have access to?
Sadly, no. I am not sure we'd legally be okay with giving them out anyway, if we'd done them under commission for Marvel, but as we hadn't started working on the next run when we got told it was being cancelled, there were no drafts that went unused.
wolverine7230 wrote:I just feel that it's such a shame that information like this has been restricted. Sure, the various wikis do a great job, but there is just something about having a nice book, and the fact that a lot more information is gathered in one place, where you simply have to turn a page, rather than spend significantly longer changing web-pages.
I totally agree.
wolverine7230 wrote:Thanks to all for all the hard work and commitment involved with making these indexes possible!
Thank you again for the kind words.
vanhornluke
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by vanhornluke »

I really enjoyed the various Index series, too, and hope they make a return, as the handbooks have recently done. My favorite of them all was Cap, since it covered his 40s/50s comics as well, which allowed for further info/clarification fora huge run of comics that are so often overlooked. I can understand why many fans would want an Index for Hulk, FF, Daredevil, etc., but the top of my wish list would be Marvel Comics/Marvel Mystery Comics/Marvel Tales. After all, that was the flagship title for over a decade, and the Cap Index shows how fascinating it could be.

My only real criticism of the various Index series is that they tended to exclude a lot of oddball stories from the chronologies that the handbooks have made clear are 616 (e.g., a number of novels, children's books, various promotional/educational comics, some intercompany crossovers, stories from various 40s/50s anthologies, 40s/50s two-page text stories, text stories from the Marvel UK hardcover annuals, Adventures of the X-Men #12, etc.). I know it's lots of work to cover all of these random oddities, but I would have preferred for the chronologies to be complete.
Jason Doty
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by Jason Doty »

Has anyone thought of pitching Index's by year? For the collector this would be the most awesome Marvel research and collecting tool ever.
loki
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by loki »

Jason Doty wrote:Has anyone thought of pitching Index's by year? For the collector this would be the most awesome Marvel research and collecting tool ever.
That was among the many, many suggestions made back when the Index was in the process of being restarted.
vanhornluke
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by vanhornluke »

Jason Doty wrote:Has anyone thought of pitching Index's by year? For the collector this would be the most awesome Marvel research and collecting tool ever.
I would love that, since it would allow coverage of lots of stuff that would never be covered under the normal format (e.g., promotional/educational one-shots, minor series of minor characters, items under other imprints like Epic and Star, other genres like westerns, war, crime, romance, humor, adaptations, etc.).
wolverine7230
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by wolverine7230 »

I agree, that would be an amazing resource.
loki
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Re: Marvel Indexes

Post by loki »

vanhornluke wrote:
Jason Doty wrote:Has anyone thought of pitching Index's by year? For the collector this would be the most awesome Marvel research and collecting tool ever.
I would love that, since it would allow coverage of lots of stuff that would never be covered under the normal format (e.g., promotional/educational one-shots, minor series of minor characters, items under other imprints like Epic and Star, other genres like westerns, war, crime, romance, humor, adaptations, etc.).
I'm afraid the sales people shot down the suggestion instantly as a non-seller.
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