The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #20

The "Book of the Dead Deluxe Edition" wraps up its run with issue #20, and Keith Pollard and Josef Rubinstein deliver a suitably dramatic cover — a golden-belted figure in red strides forward at center, flanked by a crowd of fallen Marvel characters including a Union Jack-costumed hero, a pink-clad swordsman, and several others arrayed across a grassy setting. Mark Gruenwald's exhaustive encyclopedia of Marvel's deceased continues to be an indispensable reference, capturing the breadth of characters who shaped the universe by 1988. For fans and researchers alike, this final chapter of the Handbook's "Book of the Dead" is a genuinely satisfying close to one of comics' most ambitious reference projects.