I think the Annual's Marvel has put out over the past 2 or 3 years have been excellent. They really mattered but if you had no interesting in the subject (Luke Cage and Jessica Jones marriage in New Avengers for example) you could skip over it and save $4. You didn't miss anything vital but anyone who wanted to buy it got something they could care about. It was the perfect happy medium.
I picked up the Immortal Iron Fist Annual this week though and we seem to have faltered. It was nothing more but part 3 of a story. Infact, it was the cliffhanger of the issue 9. Now if you don't pick up the annual up you're lost. To be fair the previous issue warned you about this but I can't help but feel this is taking a step in the worn direction.
I used to complain that Annuals were nothing but an oversized one-shot which was usually a bad story, with very little importance. It was a way of charging you more money once a year.
This however is forcing people to pay $4 for another part of a story they are already invested in. It's taking advantage. I hope we don't see to many of these and go back to the Bendis formula.
2 comments:
I prefer annuals that, like you said, contain something that correlates to the series, but is not so important that you're forced to buy it. However, I think, it should not just be filler, and should affect the series it spawned off of to a certain, smaller extent. If it's just filler, then I don't think it's useful. ^_~
Post a Comment