UK Annuals

[Aristotle]

I keep running into mentions of these UK DC Annuals that apparently had substantially or slightly different material than US Annuals did. A Batman text piece by Alan Moore here, a Superman bit there, etc. I was wondering if anyone could tell me: were the UK Annuals completely different from US Annuals, or just slightly? And does anyone have enough of them to give some kind of idea of just how different they were?

 

[yenaled]

UK Annuals were reprints of US comics in a bigger collection. So say for a Batman Annual you would get 2 issues of Detective, 3 issues of Batman and a old story from the 60s. Then maybe as you said text pieces or character bios (and they would cost about £3.99).

They were the only thing that non-comic book shops would sell, so normal newspaper shops or magazine shops would have them (and still do actually - they are still in print now). It was basically a good way to get into comics before you were able to brave the comic book shop.

So yeah they are not the same as US Annuals they are are mostly just reprints. They were a much bigger deal in the 80s than they are now. Now you wouldn't get any unique material at all.

 

[Brian Braddock]

I have many a UK annual from the 70's and 80's (reprinting various US comics) from my childhood, still in the attic.

Always used to pick them up at jumble sales and what not, normally with some other kid's name written in it, and doodles aplenty all over the insides (a bit of amateur colorisation with crayon wasnt uncommon either!)

Ah, the memories...................