Olshevsky first made waves in the 1970s with his small press Marvel Comics indexes. In the 1980s, Marvel thesmelves hired him to write new indexes for them; and that's where I first learned of Olshevsky, from the 'Officlal Marvel Comics Index' series featuring indexes of Marvel Team-Up, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers and X-Men. To this day, however, I've never seen those 1970s indexes in physical form - I don't think they saw much distribution in western Canada.
I suppose I was drawn to those indexes not only because I had an avid interest in Marvel lore (the indexes were an obvious partner to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe) but because Olshevsky's plot synopses seemed to me the only way I would ever possibly read the plots of every adventure of the Avengers or X-Men (little did I know).
In time, I became an indexer following in Olshevsky's footsteps when we launched our own Official Index to the Marvel Universe in 2009. Just as I was honoured to follow in Mark Gruenwald's path via the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, so too was I honoured to be performing the same work as George Olshevsky had.
Rest in peace, Mr. Olshevsky.
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