Man, I don’t have any particular nostalgia for actual vintage Marvel comic books (OK, maybe like the idea of nostalgia for Mark Gruenwald’s run on Captain America and the Madripoor stories in the Wolverine solo series, but I’m not, like, buying issues, you know?), but I sure do love the Marvel Super Heroes RPG books. I’ve said this before, but something about them does such a good job of capturing the feel of the moment without getting bogged down in specifics. Which is weird, because the sourcebooks are all about specifics!

This is Avengers Assembled (1984), which is all the character info you need on the Avengers both East and West (though I guess there wasn’t that distinction yet), SHIELD and some of their key villains. There is something to be said for grouping these in small, themed sets for easy reference. Cool information on the Avenger Mansion is brief but welcome. So is that cool illustration of Loki. I don’t recall ever seeing his under-helmet before? These sorts of supplements would fall by the wayside in 1988 when the full color Gamer’s Handbook to the Marvel Universe came out. That’s a truly awesome set of books, but a lot of the charm of these little sourcebooks does get lost in the transition.

There is lots of art supplied from Marvel in this line, but I gotta shout out Jeff Butler, who never gets enough credit. His super clean illustration work really binds the whole RPG line together.