This truly epic adaptation of Kieron Gillen's Loki series spans the nine realms as the reborn trickster struggles to walk the hero's path and save the universe from an epidemic of fear. The god of lies has been reborn, but will young Loki be Asgard's savior? When Earth is plagued by an epidemic of fear, ancient prophecy says only Thor can stop the monstrous threat of the Serpent, but without help from Loki, Thor is certain to fail. Aided by a handmaiden from Hel and a demon puppy, Loki must risk everything to find redemption—or doom himself for eternity. Either way, a Nightmare lies in wait hoping to rule the world and Loki will have to risk everything on his craziest scheme of all! Meanwhile, new gods threaten to disrupt the status quo, throwing everything out of balance. Loki must act as a responsible ambassador, but will the nine worlds end in Surtur's fire? In this brand-new prose novel inspired by the epic comic series by Kieron Gillen, young Loki must cross the realms to reclaim his own story, outwit ancient enemies, struggle to do the right thing, and avoid falling in love.

This work provides an extensive guide for students, fans, and collectors of Marvel Comics. Focusing on Marvel's mainstream comics, the author provides a detailed description of each comic along with a bibliographic citation listing the publication's title, writers/artists, publisher, ISBN (if available), and a plot synopsis. One appendix provides a comprehensive alphabetical index of Marvel and Marvel-related publications to 2005, while two other appendices provide selected lists of Marvel-related game books and unpublished Marvel titles.

Winner of the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book The first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics’ interconnected, half-million-page story, a revelatory guide to the “epic of epics”—and to the past sixty years of American culture—from a beloved authority on the subject who read all 27,000+ Marvel superhero comics and lived to tell the tale “Brilliant, eccentric, moving and wholly wonderful. . . . Wolk proves to be the perfect guide for this type of adventure: nimble, learned, funny and sincere. . . . All of the Marvels is magnificently marvelous. Wolk’s work will invite many more alliterative superlatives. It deserves them all.” —Junot Díaz, New York Times Book Review The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, as Douglas Wolk notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages to date, and still growing. The Marvel story is a gigantic mountain smack in the middle of contemporary culture. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. Everyone recognizes its protagonists: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men. Eighteen of the hundred highest-grossing movies of all time are based on parts of it. Yet not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing—nobody’s supposed to. So, of course, that’s what Wolk did: he read all 27,000+ comics that make up the Marvel Universe thus far, from Alpha Flight to Omega the Unknown. And then he made sense of it—seeing into the ever-expanding story, in its parts and as a whole, and seeing through it, as a prism through which to view the landscape of American culture. In Wolk’s hands, the mammoth Marvel narrative becomes a fun-house-mirror history of the past sixty years, from the atomic night terrors of the Cold War to the technocracy and political division of the present day—a boisterous, tragicomic, magnificently filigreed epic about power and ethics, set in a world transformed by wonders. As a work of cultural exegesis, this is sneakily significant, even a landmark; it’s also ludicrously fun. Wolk sees fascinating patterns—the rise and fall of particular cultural aspirations, and of the storytelling modes that conveyed them. He observes the Marvel story’s progressive visions and its painful stereotypes, its patches of woeful hackwork and stretches of luminous creativity, and the way it all feeds into a potent cosmology that echoes our deepest hopes and fears. This is a huge treat for Marvel fans, but it’s also a revelation for readers who don’t know Doctor Strange from Doctor Doom. Here, truly, are all of the marvels.

The American Villain: Encyclopedia of Bad Guys in Comics, Film, and Television seeks to provide one go-to reference for the study of the most popular and iconic villains in American popular culture. Since the 1980s, pop culture has focused on what makes a villain a villain. The Joker, Darth Vader, and Hannibal Lecter have all been placed under the microscope to get to the origins of their villainy. Additionally, such bad guys as Angelus from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows have emphasized the desire for redemption—in even the darkest of villains. Various incarnations of Lucifer/Satan have even gone so far as to explore the very foundations of what we consider "evil." The American Villain: Encyclopedia of Bad Guys in Comics, Film, and Television seeks to collect all of those stories into one comprehensive volume. The volume opens with essays about villains in popular culture, followed by 100 A–Z entries on the most notorious bad guys in film, comics, and more. Sidebars highlight ancillary points of interest, such as authors, creators, and tropes that illuminate the motives of various villains. A glossary of key terms and a bibliography provide students with resources to continue their study of what makes the "baddest" among us so bad.

This reference work combines bibliographical, biographical and critical information on 900 living poets writing in the English language. Entries are arranged alphabetically, and this edition includes 120 new entrants, including Wendy Cope, Benjamin Zephaniah and Rachel McAlpine.