Annual publication

Annual publications, more often simply called annuals, are periodical publications appearing regularly once per year. Although exact definitions may vary, types of annuals include: calendars and almanacs, directories, yearbooks, annual reports, proceedings and transactions and literary annuals.

Yearbooks

A yearbook is a volume that summarizes events of the past year. Chase Magnett, for ComicBook.com, highlighted that "annuals are ultimately best defined by being what the monthly issues are not" and that "the only consistency surrounding the concept of these special sorts of issues is that they have been around in some form or another just about as long as superhero comics have been published". As a result, annuals are much less valuable as collectables than other comic books, since collectors do not view them as part of a complete series run.

Comic book annuals originally were little more than reprint albums (for example Superman Annual #1, August 1960), representing stories that had first seen publication in their monthly counterparts, but eventually, this changed to annuals featuring primarily all-new material (the first example being Fantastic Four Annual #1, July 1963 Shoberl continued to edit the annual until 1834. A junior version called The Juvenile Forget-me-not was published from 1828 onward.

For many years until the near-collapse of the British children's comics market, an annual would be published each year for each of the comic titles published by Thomson and IPC/Fleetway, featuring extra adventures of the comic's current and former characters, plus additional material in the form of puzzles, text articles, etc. Annuals were often even published for comics which had themselves ceased publication or been absorbed into other titles; for example, Scorcher annuals were still being published 10 years after the comic itself had been absorbed into Tiger. Today, this section of the market has been reduced to just a couple of surviving titles.

In addition, annuals are often published centered on sports, toys, currently-popular celebrities, recently released films, and popular TV series. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s, companies like World Distributors, Brown Watson, and Grandreams were known for publishing annuals based on licensed characters and properties. British annuals are also published featuring American characters such as Spider-Man, often with simplified content aimed at younger readers. As tastes in these areas change, so does the line-up of annuals released each year. The increasing emphasis in recent years on annuals of this type (as opposed to the "classic" line-up of annuals based on comics) means that sales remain strong, and, in fact, they doubled between 1998 and 2005. Some annuals have become extremely collectible, especially The Beano, The Dandy, Rupert and Eagle.

Annual publication

Yearbooks

See also

References