Yesterday we talked about the Bloodlines event that ran through DC Annuals back in 1993. And that got me thinking about the whole concept of the annual.

For you youngsters out there, I know this is a strange concept, but the Big Two used to put out annuals for all of their major titles...every single year!! That's right, annuals were actually an annual event!

Granted, Marvel was a lot more consistent about it than DC...from the mid-late 1970s up until 2001, if you were a major Marvel title, you were having an annual during the summer, dammit. DC was always a little bit spottier--Wonder Woman, for example, didn't have an annual in 1990 or 1991, nor 1993 0r 94, for some reason. That's why there was no Wonder Woman Bloodlines character...

For some reason, they pretty much stopped doing the annuals at the turn of the century. DC didn't have any after 2000, Marvel after 2001. But lately, they've started to creep back into vogue.

In the "good old days," Marvel used their annuals for special events: Doctor Doom's origins!! Reed & Sue's wedding!! The Sinister Six!! Soon, though, they sort of devolved into just another story, a thirteenth issue per year of your favorite mag. Sometime a good (or great!) story, sometimes filler, sometimes utter crap. But it was always there.

What always interested me was the way Marvel, and especially DC, used their annuals in the 1990s. They would run company-wide events through the annuals, rather than publishing a stand-alone Blackest Night type series. Instead of a million crossovers or spin-off mini-series, the stories were mostly contained in just the annuals, usually with a pair of "bookend" specials to introduce and conclude the story.

Marvel started the ball rolling in 1988, with the "Evolutionary Wars" story, which ran through their annuals that summer.

They followed in 1989 with the "Atlantis Attacks" storyline:

(Please don't ask what Spidey and She-Hulk mixing it up with the Abomination had to do with Atlantis...it's very complicated).

Marvel apparently had enough of line-wide crossovers, so for the next few years they sort of "grouped" their annuals, with 4 or 5 "teamed-up" to present one storyline, whle the other annuals did their thing. So we had stories likes "Days Of Future Present" that ran through the Fantastic Four and X-Annuals:

Or the "Vibranium Vendetta":

Or "The Return Of The Defenders":

After 1992, Marvel dropped the crossover annuals, and they became stand-alones again...except for 1998, when everyone had odd, joint "team-up" annuals:

By 2001, Marvel annuals were done.

DC stuck with the "theme" idea longer than Marvel. It started in 1991, with the "Armageddon: 2001" story:

(Spoiler Alert: that Armageddon never happened. Phew...)

They followed in 1992 with the storyline in which everybody gave into temptation, "Eclipso: The Darkness Within."

1993 featured the lameness of space parasites inadvertently creating a whole bunch of new heroes, "Bloodlines":

(I chose to picture that one, because everybody loooves Jamm so much).

After that DC got away from line-wide storylines, and chose instead to have all of a given year's annuals follow a set theme. In 1994, it was Elseworlds stories:

In 1995, DC featured "Year One" stories of their heroes:

1996 brought "Legends of the Dead Earth," stories set far, far in the future, after Earth was gone but the legacies of our heroes still influenced things:

1997 shifted to "Pulp Heroes":

1998 focused on tales of a supernatural bent, "Ghosts":

Hey, look--Nekron!!

1999 featured the famous, soon-to-be-ripped-off-by-Marvel JLApe:

In 2000, DC once again tried to force feed...err, introduce a plethora of new heroes, with "Planet DC," which featured various foreign heroes cavorting with the name heroes. (Planet DC is more snarkily known as "Bloodlones Mark II" for it's largely unsuccessful attempt to mass create new heroes for the DC Universe):

At the risk of offending any Argentinian readers, I refrain from Evita jokes here...

2000 was DC's last gasp for annuals.

Nowadays the annuals seem to be, slowly, creeping back into vogue. Sometimes they're just a place to dump late stories, or inventory stories; sometimes a place to stick an origin story, or introduce a new character (like this month's Batman/Detective annuals).

But this sporadic, hot-or-miss, whenever-we-feel-like-it-but-some-years-we-don't schedule sort of defeats the purpose of calling it an "annual." So come on, DC and Marvel--let's commit. If you want to publish annuals, do it annually.

And I thought that using annuals for crossover events or themes was kind of cool. Much cooler than making me buy 3 issues of slow-paced Black Night: Batman. So don't be afraid to try that, OK?

Flashback time, kiddies, as we zoom back to 1993. DC was running an event through their annuals that year (what a concept!!): Bloodlines. It was pretty stupid, and you can obtain most of it through quarter bins these days. Long stories short: A goofy race of "space parasites" managed to (accidentally) transform a bunch of humans into brand new super-heroes. Yahoo!!

The "event" is largely forgotten these days, but DC seemed pretty proud of it at the time, and hopeful for the future of these guys (click to embiggen):

Yeah. A lot of winners, there. Pretty much a 1990s version of Dial H For Hero, a bunch of disposable heroes you come up with when you suddenly need to create 20+ new heroes via editorial fiat. Sorry, DC, not a breakout amongst the bunch...

Most of them are dead these days, killed by Superboy-Prime (& Geoff Johns) in Infinite Crisis. Still, they had more lasting impact on the DC Universe than anything out of Final Crisis, so we shouldn't judge...

Special note to Paul Levitz:

This guy had better turn up in your Legion, bro...