Russell Rogers
As far as a quick and dirty summary of the Marvel universe characters, this book does a great job of giving the reader just enough information without being boring while nicely categorizing everything in the process. I'd say, the whole periodic table aspect of the book is a lame gimmick and I pretty much ignored it throughout the book. But the way characters are arranged by what they are (Mutants, Extraterrestrial, Super Soldier Serum, Robotic, etc.) was fascinating to me. It revealed storyline "islands" to me that I never fully realized before. I've always been aware that the X-Men island was a (Mutant) storyline and that was different from a Thor (Asgardian) island. But as I went thru the book I noticed that there are many, many more than I thought (Spider verse, Pym Partials, Magic, Chi, Inhumans, Radiation, etc). I probably wouldn't recommend this to a seasoned comic reader. But for those who want the Clif Notes of Marvel, this is pretty good.