<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Cyke.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Cyke_t.jpg" width="175" height="255" border="0" hspace="2" align="right"></a>click on the images for larger, readable versions...
Along with prequels, an adaptation, a God Loves, Man Kills reprint, and trades out the wazoo, Marvel’s “meaty“ tie-in to May’s X2, aimed directly at long-term and lapses X-Men fans is clearly Marvel Encyclopedia Volume 2: X-Men, due in April. Clocking in at 240 pages and over 400 profiles, the Encyclopedia is geared to fully embrace the 40+ year history of the mutants. Newsarama caught up with researcher Eric Moreels and editor Jeff Youngquist for more.
According to Youngquist, the decision to go back to the Encyclopedia well came when numbers started rolling in on the first volume of the Marvel Encyclopedia last year. “Volume 1 -- the Marvel Encyclopedia - was a huge success, especially in the bookstore market, so it only stood to reason that there would be a follow-up of some kind,” Youngquist said. “With X2 right around the corner, and given the vast library of X-Men-related characters, the choice of subject matter was obvious for us.”
Despite the publisher’s current lighter touch on X-continuity and history than it has had in the past, to fill the pages of the hardcover, more than just the core team members and supporting casts were going to have to be included. By the same token, if more characters than the usual suspects were going to be included, some heavy research was going to be needed, given the target audience’s familiarity with the subject.
While he was responsible for creating a large number of them, Chris Claremont could not afford to devote the time and energy necessary to creating profiles for the characters to be included in the volume, so for the raw data, Marvel turned to Eric Moreels, the founder of the X-Fan website.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Cyke2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Cyke2_t.jpg" width="175" height="255" border="0" hspace="2" align="left"></a> "Eric's extensive knowledge of the X-Men universe proved to an essential resource as our researcher/writer," Youngquist said. “With so many entries, and given a tight deadline necessitated by our desire to get the book into stores in time for X2, we needed to put a system in place that would allow our writer -- the brilliant Syd Barney-Hawke -- to do just that: write. We didn't want her to spend all her time rooting through back-issues and trade paperbacks for example, trying to pin down the first appearance of Ahab - Fantastic Four Annual #23, by the way. Eric's extensive knowledge of the X-Men universe proved to be an essential resource in that regard.”
Moreels involvement with the X-Men Encyclopedia began when the first volume was announced. "When Marvel first announced they were doing a new Official Handbook-style project, which ended up being the first volume of the Marvel Encyclopedia I contacted managing editor David Bogart and expressed an interest in working on it,” Moreels said. “Whilst that didn't pan out, apparently my offer stuck with David and when the second X-Men volume came around he, Collections Editor Jeff Youngquist, and editor Mark Beazley approached me with the offer to do research on the new book.”
“Eric would submit extremely detailed research on each character -- essentially chronicling their every appearance --which Syd would craft into the finished entries you'll see in the book,” Youngquist said. “As with the Marvel Encyclopedia, we attempted to cut to the core of each character, employing continuity only as a means to emphasize character. In addition to Syd and Eric, the team needed to pull off something like this was massive, and included my brother-in-arms, co-editor Mark Beazley; assistant editor Jen Grünwald; copy editor Sarah Fan; art director Matty Ryan; and designers Patrick McGrath, Tim Smith III and Victor Gonzalez. Tom Marvelli of Marvel's Creative Services Department designed our dust jacket, and the cover underneath the jacket itself was painted by Gabriel Dell'Otto. And major props go to Jen Chan, Wing Lee & Erik Ko of UDON, who recolored some vintage artwork for use in the book.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Colossus.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Colossus_t.jpg" width="175" height="277" border="0" hspace="2" align="right"></a> Research for the volume took Moreels over two months, using resources such as the original Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, bios located on Marvel's own web site, and the recent Marvel Encyclopedia as well as re-reading a large number of back issues – all necessary, given the scope of the project.
"This project was a bit more complex than last year's Marvel Encyclopedia, which weighed in with about 150 characters." explained Youngquist. "The X-Men Encyclopedia includes around 400 entries. That means we had to assemble artwork on 400 characters, some of whom haven't appeared anywhere in quite a few years -- and some of whom, like members of the Acolytes and Shi'ar Imperial Guard, only appeared in one or two issues, or in extreme cases, one or two panels.”
To fit everyone in, the X-Men Encyclopedia will have a modified format compared to last year’s volume. “Let's face it: Once you get past the first-tier heroes and villains, not every characters deservers a full-page entry,” Youngquist said. “In the X-Men Encyclopedia, some characters get two pages, some get one and some get half a page. There are even quarter-page entries and third-of-a-page entries. That fact enabled us to include a great many more characters than the Marvel Encyclopedia.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Dazzler.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Marvel/Dazzler_t.jpg" width="175" height="284" border="0" hspace="2" align="left"></a>Despite the 400 entries, Moreels confessed that there are some that he wished that would have been included, "I was hoping we'd have room to spotlight the X-Men: Evolution characters,” Moreels said. “Similarly some of the teams that have sections in the book, like the Morlocks and the Imperial Guard, there just wasn't enough room to include every character that has been a member, but we did get the majority of them in there."
Youngquist gave an example of the detail level: “Let's see ... 27 Acolytes, 28 Morlocks and 34 members of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard,” the editor said. “And we tried to be as current as possible. For example, there's an entry for Maximus Lobo, a new villain presently appearing in the pages of Uncanny X-Men.”
Given the success of the first volume, and the “shooting fish in a bucket” potential for sales on Volume 2, Youngquist said he and Beazley are looking at ways to expand the format, and return to the well again. "Fan response to the Marvel and X-Men Encyclopedias has been overwhelming, so it's safe to say that, yes, there will be future volumes,” Youngquist said. “There are definitely more volumes on the table, but it's a little too early to discuss them right now.”
Chris Partin contributed to this article