2025-2026 Rumor/Leak List - UPDATED List 9-9-25 (after the livestream)

Mephisto is drawn a few different ways for quite awhile so I'm not sure there is a singular "classic" look. He should be pinker though to be classic.
 
The handbook looks have been etched into my brain and I never read the actual handbook. I think the images were plastered on every Wiki page and forum. Those books were almost as informative for the internet generations as those who read the physical editions.
 
The 90s trading cards were also huge for me. I was only a sporadic comic reader because we didn't have a comic shop where I grew up until I was much older, so I had to pick up random issues at the grocery store. They sold those cards at every convenience store though and we all traded them in school. Those and the handbooks that I picked up at our local flea market were my real introduction to the Marvel Universe.
 
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My first job when I was 14 was at a comic book store and I poured over those handbooks like crazy, so they're pretty burned into my memory as well.

Those cards were a pretty big deal too. I had several clear sleeves on my wall with nine each of those. Marvel, X-Men, even G Joe cards.
 
I’ll go a step further and say that my imagination of what the text in the Handbook described was far more important to my love and immersion in the Marvel Universe than any comic book.
 
I've always loved the handbooks and encyclopedias myself as well. I don't think that I'm personally as attached to the OHOTMU as others seem to be, although I certainly still do enjoy it and use it as a reference. Despite turning 50 next month my comic reading tends to skewer more recent (2010 and forward) so that doesn't match up quite as well with the older handbook. I never had a place to buy comics readily availabale to me until that point in my life. With that being said a lot of my reading is still from material originating in the 80s and 90s, just not quite as heavy as it has been from the 2010s. I think this is why I have such an attachment to and desire for some of the "newer" X-Men characters. I have Rockslide, Pixie, Anole, Armor, Magma, Cypher, Sage, Krakoa, Hellion, etc heavily factoring in my personal top dozen or so wanted figures. It's likely the same reason that Husk has been my favorite figure of the year so far.
 
I just turned 52 (thank you very much) and I grew up with the Handbooks. Had the first collected volumes. I think there were 8 of them. I read a lot of different Marvel titles (when I was younger), but a good portion of my familiarity with characters is through the Handbook. Take someone like Crossfire. Don't have too many memories of him being in actual comics, but I have his entry in the Handbook etched in my mind. So many characters imprinted into my mind based on the hundreds of times I browsed through those books.
 
Yep, I fall right in that range- I'll be 51 this fall. OHOTMU was my bible in the 80s. About 99% of my interest in Marvel figures is from the '78-89 and '98-2004 eras.
 
Youngsters! Im a few years older, but I was all about those reference books. OHOTMU (& DC’s Who’s Who, and others) were and still are staples of my collection. I was an avid role player and Hero Games’s Champions was one of my groups’ staples. Those reference books were not only great for reading up on characters and events, but provided inspiration for game characters and adventures.
 
I’m 56 and mostly care about Marvel characters invented 1961-88 or so. I make exceptions for a few characters created 2005-present that I enjoy. Kamala Kahn, Kate Bishop, etc.

The old OHOTMU was always like flipping thru the Monster Manual.
 
37 here. Trading cards were my first foray into things, but I got hold of the Handbooks at some point and loved them. Those are usually the versions of classic characters I want to see made.

BUT, that's not all I want made. There are a lot of modern characters I'm interested in. Then, as now, my initial exposure to almost all of them is not from the comics but through other media. So I'll read a wiki page, or see some interesting artwork, or (my favorite way) a ML figure gets announced and it prompts me to go learn more about them. Just like there are some older characters I knew first and best through a trading card or Handbook entry, I like that ML keeps me somewhat connected to modern comics. And every now and then I get in front of the line - I was wanting Cho Hulk for a very long time before they made him, and I'm still pining for an Unstoppable Wasp.
 
As a kid, I didn't read a lot of comics. I liked them, but they were an occasional purchase by a parent at a grocery store. My own spending money went towards action figures, so my main frame of reference for a lot of the extended MU would be the old trading cards. I was familiar with a lot of X-Men and Spider-Man characters via the few comics I had and then eventually their respective cartoons, but almost every other character came from the trading cards. If I hear a name like The Rose or The High Evolutionary it's the trading card that first pops into my head. And the ones of dead characters struck me as so eerie because they would literally say "Deceased" on them. I still remember the Cypher card for that reason. And that was the later series that was packaged with X-Men figures, I had a lot of the older runs thanks to generous older cousins giving them to me.
 
Misfit said:
And the ones of dead characters struck me as so eerie because they would literally say "Deceased" on them. I still remember the Cypher card for that reason.
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I remember feeling that way with the OHOTMU "book of the dead" and the characters rising from their graves in a nighttime setting. Loved it.
bookofthedead.jpg
 
LOVE that cover. All of the group shots on the Handbook covers are pretty amazing.

The dedicated art is the thing that makes the Handbook and trading cards stand out against the online wiki-style encyclopedias. I really love having all the characters done in a cohesive style, even if not all by the same artist.
 
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