Hey Kids, Comics! #342 - Guided Tours

Hey gang…JediCole here. Life got in the way in a huge way and I am finally getting caught up on the posting of prior issues of “Hey Kids, Comics!” While available on Podbean for some time, they have not shown up here until now. Sorry for the delay.

In the halcyon days of comic book publishing of the 80s, Marvel and DC both had an inspiration…a guide book to their respective universes. Or at least a means to publish the stats of their burgeoning catalogs of characters.

Who’s Who Batcave entry featuring HKC!’s favorite snaggle-toothed hunchback.

Thus were Who’s Who and The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe born! And now Andrew Farmer and Cole Houston are going to tell you all about the editorial groundwork that led to these best-selling comics that were not of the traditional narrative variety.

The “Big Two” were not the only players in this game. Over the years a few indy publishers jumped on the bandwagon. And both DC and Marvel even published guidebooks to popular licensed titles that were in the same format as the titles that would chronicle the obvious and the obscure in each universe.