New Brevoort Formspring

For Marvel, what was the original purpose of annuals, and when do you think they became irrelevant or a tough sell?

Anonymous

Annuals were originally created in order to be able to sell an additional issue–a more expensive issue at that–during the prime selling periods. So for a popular series, you would get 13 issues in a year rather than 12.
Even by the end of the 1960s, the luster started to come off of Annuals, and they became a difficult sell as the business migrated to the Direct Market. A better way to sell 13 issues, as it turned out, was just to produce 13 issues–or 14, or 16, or however many you could comfortably do.
1. carlosjdrew liked this
2. thedefaultlocation liked this
3. mattfromitaly liked this
4. sodiumlamp said: That being the case, why does Marvel still publish annuals occasionally? Why not just do a double-sized issue of the main series, or a one-shot? These days, it seems like the only thing going for annuals is having the word “annual” on the cover.
5. brevoortformspring posted this