Gave up on my Amazon order and got the guide from Gamestop last night. Christ, people are not exaggerating; there's god damned authority in this thing.
The valuable thing to me is that it's not just a great frame data guide; as someone said that information is something that could change as the game is updated or patched, and a wiki would be more valuable in the long run.
What's really important IMHO is the extremely detailed breakdown of the logic behind various assists, specials, hypers, and branching move utilities like Dante's arsenal. The fact that it's done like a classic DoubleJump / Versus Books guide, with pictoral breakdowns of move stages and key visual frames, creates a much better mnemonic learning device than just a forum thread of assorted comments.
(And yes, the Dante section in particular is about the only way I'm every going to figure the bastard out, god damn, lol lol lol.)
That, and the "battle plan" section for each character is a pretty damn comprehensive write up of how everyone plays and what they "should" be doing in a fight at this stage in the game's evolution. That may change as new strategies are discovered, but the guide seems like a valuable historical tome - all future evolutions of the characters' strategy will build on this foundation, as far as I can tell.