Old-school Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers!

I love old-school OHMUs. I picked up a handful at Wizard-Con. I really like the art and the way they really went all-out with the bios and power descriptions.

I picked out few examples of my favorite art from the stack I bought. WARNING! 80s fashion and hair-cuts ahoy!




Wave back at Devil Dinosaur!



Pre-movie Blade.



Boom-Boom's Madonna phase.



Bullseye with great crazy-eyes.



Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (Fury's main-squeeze) look was later stolen by Rogue.



Meggan is just too adorable.



Moon Boy! Devil Dinosaur's BFF.



Persuasion, the Purple Man's daughter.



Look at Jubilee's scary Joker-grin.



Killraven's Playgirl pose.



Madame Hydra, Dr. Freud on line one for you.



I loved Psylocke's old-school look.



Razorback! A mutant trucker from Arkansas.



I almost forgot! Apparently Whoopi Goldberg was in Power Pack as Numinus.


Love these books.

Comments

[yaseen101]

LOVE the art.

Who drew these again?

[jlroberson]

A bunch of different people. Meggan is Alan Davis, and Killraven is OF COURSE P. Craig Russell. Unfortunately, because of the 80s sameness of Marvel finishes it's hard for me to ID the rest, but I will say a number of them seem to bear the inks of Joe Rubenstein, and on Blade Tom Palmer I think. I should have a better eye for these, as I bought them as a teen when they were new.

[perletwo]

IIRC, Joe Rubenstein inked pretty much all of the first iteration of HotMU, so I'd call it a good bet. And he's not an inker with a chameleon style, so everything comes out with that Rubensteinian heavy finish.

[jlroberson]

Which pretty much always gave a very nice burnished look to even the least of pencillers. Palmer, I'd say, would be another one. I won't go so far as to say both inkers overwhelmed their pencillers, but their styles had a way of filling in gaps and how many of those gaps were filled depended on the penciller. Palmer, for instance. With Colan or Williamson it was usually a fairly glorious blend(and Colan and Leiloha were the smartest inkers Colan ever had, who knew just what to strengthen and solidify, and what to add and what not to*). With anyone lesser, you could tell that Palmer was brought in to save the art, and basically used the pencils as elaborate layouts.

*And my hat's off to ANYONE who was able to coherently ink Colan. I grew up with his work--ToD and HTD were my two favorite comics when I was ages 6-11, the duration of their runs--and worship it as everyone ought to. But I can also see why he went mostly to printing his pencils directly in the 80s, because most inkers just couldn't cope with those wild and amorphous pencils. If you look at them, they're a churning, painterly WHOOSH swirling in all directions on the page. I expect they make a lot more sense when you can see the shading and gradations(as opposed to high-contrast xeroxes, say) of his work, something that most inkers wouldn't have been able to deal with and wouldn't have been needed for.

[perletwo]

Oh my YES on Colan. Remember that little suspense/horror series he did for DC in the 80s, Night Force? I went from getting into comics via George Perez's nice clean New Teen Titans straight to reading that, and my little kid mind went "BUZUHHHHHH?!?" I knew it was impressive once I deciphered what I was looking at, but admiring both style extremes just did. not. compute.

[icon_uk]

So much motto to that, I was growing up at the same time, and after so much exposure to the ligne claire 9sp) approach, Coaln was like a slap in the face, it took a little longer to see the artistry of his work, but it was so worth the effort!

[nezchan]

I was kinda the same way with Bill Sienkiewicz's stuff back in the late 80's. I can look at it now and see what an amazing thing it was, but at the time I just couldn't comprehend what was in front of me.

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

The Psylocke illos looks a bit like Alan Davis to me too.

[halloweenjack]

I think that Bullseye may be "Lanky" Frank Miller himself.

[kirayoshi]

I'm pretty sure Jon Bogdanove did Boom-Boom and Numinus, while John Romita Jr. did Bullseye and John Byrne did Razorback(I think he had appeared in a few issues of his She-Hulk run).

[thehefner]

I adore scouring through old copies of DC's Who's Who, but always found myself less interested in the Marvel handbooks. They seemed less rife with crack and neat obscure characters, not to mention hilariously dated 80's-ness. Looking at these, it appears I may have been gravely mistaken. Time to seek out handbooks, pronto.

[jlroberson]

They're not bad, and the lengths they stretch modern physics to try to at least provide sciencEY explanations of people's powers is very entertaining.

[proteus_lives]

I loved the SCIENCE! of them.

I don't need to know how high Angel can fly but damnit, it's good to know.

[proteus_lives]

You're wrong...DEAD wrong.

They're very fun and have been collected into big B/W editions.

[blake_reitz]

Oh yeah, the Marvel Essentials collections of these are worth every penny. There's a store I visit when I'm in the Twin Cities (although actually way out on Pilot's Knob) that has them discounted to five bucks each. It was wonderful.

[jlbarnett]

wow, I had no idea Blade was ever like that. I thought he came into the Spider-man series in the 90's pretty unchanged from the comics.

[thanekos]

considering that we're apparently getting Bullseye took a year off to play murder baseball, that pic's looking like a spastic's pitch is doubly hilarious

Mod note

[kingrockwell]

"Spastic" is an ableist slur. Please refrain from using it.

[timgueugen]

FYI that's the Madame Hydra from the Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD miniseries and subsequent Nick Fury monthly series, not Viper. And off topic I've suspected for a while now that both characters were probably an influence for the character design of Shego from Kim Possible, especially since Betty Director from the same series is such an obvious attempt at a female Nick Fury.,

[jlroberson]

Looking at the relation of her body proportions to her boots and hardware, and the facial structure, I'm betting that's Simonson. It's too bold to be Art Adams, the only other one I can recall at the time who favored that structure.

[proteus_lives]

Paul Neary.

[okkult3000]

Somehow it's more disturbing to me that Moonboy is wearing just a shirt than it would be if he were just naked. I don't know why.

[proteus_lives]

It's very Disney.

[queenrikki]

You have no idea how much my childhood self loved reading these books. It's how I gained a near encylopedic knowledge of 1980's Marvel Comics. Of course, we were well into the 1990s but what's a decade here or there (the only thing I loved nearly as much was Rom and the New Universe *shut up, I was 8*)

[queen_marshed]

Galactu's "Bu-WA?!" expression in the last one is hilarious.

[tzipwich]

Purple Man has a daughter?


...I don't want to know this story, do I.

[icon_uk]

It's more than a little skeevy, Purple Man fell in love with a woman and she, as usual, had no say in the matter, but after a while eventually he realised that he actually DID love her and released her from his control, hoping she'd reciprocate. She was understandably not so agreeable about it and fled, and he never pursued her (He was actually sort of heartbroken, in his warped skeevy way). She discovered she was pregnant after that, but kept the child, who was normal until she turned 16, at which point Daddy's unusual skintone kicked in and she developed similar powers but became a hero in Alpha Flight/Beta Flight

[northstarfan]

...she developed similar powers but became a hero the bane of Northstar's existence in Alpha Flight/Beta Flight.

Fixed that. ;)

[pyrotwilight]

Heh, old school Psylocke's outfit look's like Superwoman's.

[icon_uk]

If I felt I could call this a series I wold have added it to my "Books you can read and reread" submission, because I ADORED these books, insane science, explanations for the crackiest of events, and lovely art. Mark Gruenwald kicking back as he loved to do.

[kamino_neko]

Jubes better hope that vest doesn't shift, 'cuz I can't imagine that top actually covers anything...

[ian_karkull]

It was acceptable in the 80's.. It was acceptable at the time..

[northstarfan]

Is Jubilee wearing a cut-down of one of Dazzler's old costumes?

[cainofdreaming]

Dazzler's, Rogue's and Storm's I think. She raided their wardrobes when she was hiding in their Australian headquarters.

[ar_feiniel]

I like these. They have a lot of personality.

[cainofdreaming]

Ah, Devil Dinosaur. No one can say he has a monkey on his back.

Because if you do he'll chomp your head off.

[newnumber6]

As 80s as it was, I loved Boom-Boom's look there.

And I loved the OHOTMU's as a whole. Very fun reading, both for the wow of getting all the information on my favorite characters (before you could just wiki it), and also for seeing characters I'd never heard of.

[newnumber6]

Oh, and Razorback... you gotta love a guy who realizes his mutant power is to drive anything... and so he dresses up in a giant boar costume.

[tacobob]

I do like Galactus' expression there, he's like

"OHMYGODITSWHOOPIEGOLDBERG!IBETTERGETMYAUTOGRAPHBOOK!ILOVEDSISTERACT!OHBOYOHBOY!"

[halloweenjack]

I find Moon Boy's lack of visible genitalia... disturbing.

(Not that I wanted to see them particularly, but... you know. It's not like he even has Sasquatch's pubic-hair loincloth. Maybe, uh, he just took a cold bath?)

[psychopathicus_rex]

I think it's just that he's got a thick layer of fur covering them, as animalistic characters in comics are wont to have.

[geoffsebesta]

God these are great. I love MHU, wish they'd do it again and do it as well. It was really an in-house stylebook that they slapped a masthead on and sold to us all...and we loved it....

The Marvel Age stuff from the same period was also great, though totally useless in the age of digital.

[proteus_lives]

They were.

The modern one are so lackluster. No original art and skimpy bio/power profiles.

[apexpredator]

Love these books, I may have to dig up some of my old ones for re-scanning here.

[angelophile]

I love how happy Bullseye looks.

"Wheee! Die!"

[psychopathicus_rex]

That... is NOT a good look for Jubilee. Scary Clockwork Orange-face aside, what the HELL is she wearing? Whatever it is, it doesn't work.
Also, while I agree that that's a good look for Psylocke (she of the inexplicable name - can SOMEONE tell me just what the hell her name is supposed to mean? Anybody?!), the artist was clearly WAY too in love with drawing folds of cloth. That cape would drag on the ground behind her like the hem of a wedding dress - we're talking at least a yard or two past her ankles here. Batman might be able to get away with it - his cloak frequently has little to do with reality, in any case - but Psylocke? Nnnnnno.

[proteus_lives]

I think it's a merger of psyche and locke. "Psylocke" sorta "unlock the mind" because she's a telepath.

I could be completely off-base.

Jubliee's first costume was bits and pieces from Storm's, Rogue and Dazzler's clothes.

[psychopathicus_rex]

It's as good a guess as any, I suppose, but if the emphasis is on ;unlocking the mind', you'd think it'd be 'PsyKEYE', not 'Psylocke'.
...
Wait a minute.
'Psy-keye'? Psyche?
Psyche.
Key.
Lock.
Psy-key, Psy-lock...
Holy crap, is her name actually a bad PUN?!

[jlbarnett]

considering she was named in universe by Mojo I believe that's the case.

[psychopathicus_rex]

That WOULD explain it, yes. Has that been posted here?

[skalja]

You know, if you changed her sweater and her hairstyle, Boom-Boom would be totally on trend for today's fringe fashion.

[eliyes]

BUFORD! *waves*