If you like character stats, you are going to go hog wild over this.
Steve Rogers details his thoughts on every single character involved in the Heroic Age. This almanac contains profiles and stats for well over a hundred heroes.
The Good
It's actually a bit fun to read some of Rogers' curt assessments of wild card characters like the Punisher and X-Man. The writers involved in this should be complemented for never just putting out bland descriptions. Each one of these entries are actually pretty true to the characters, no matter how obscure, and the voice always stays true to Cap's personality. There were also some generally surprising "status updates" like how Noh-Varr's become the Protector - - a fact I wasn't aware of.
The Bad
The prose piece that frames this seemed kind of superfluous and actually a little head-scratching. It doesn't really seem in character for Steve Rogers to go on some spirit quest and the revelations about heroism he finds seemed to be tennuously drawn to justify this almanac.
The Verdict - 3/5
A book like this is really tricky to review. It's somewhere between an Offical Handbook of the Marvel Universe and a Strike Files special that Marvel used to do before every crossover. There's a question as to how helpful this is to somebody who's already got access to Marvel's own online databases (or Comic Vine's extensive encylopedia) but if you've always been fascinated by the RPG possibilites inherent to the MU, this will definitely give you plenty of material to make you feel like you're actually in this world. If stats are you're thing, they've certainly dealt with all that in exhaustive detail, here.
