I need a bit of help with my comic bindings....

1 - What super-hero annuals came out in 1979
2 - What months did the hit the stands

The easiest way I know to answer that question:

Go to mycomicshop.com.

Run a search on anything, it's not important -- you just want to get to the point where you see the "Additional Search Options" menu on the left.

Search on the word "Annual," specifying that you're looking for Marvel titles published between Jan 1979 and Dec 1979. That'll give you all the Marvel annuals -- AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #13, AVENGERS ANNUAL #9, and so on.

DC didn't publish any annuals in 1979 -- I think they got back into the annual business with LEGION Annual #1 in '82 -- so no trouble there.

You can use this function in other ways, too -- find a complete list of everything DC published in a given month or year, so you don't miss things like the 1980 SUPERBOY SPECTACULAR, and so on.



I'm sure there are people who could tell you this; the way I always figure it out, though, is to compare back-cover ads. The annuals aren't month-dated, but they feature the same ads that the other books that came out the same month do. In cases where the same back-cover ad ran in multiple months, the inside back cover ad or inside front-cover ad is usually enough to narrow it down.

kdb

Another great site for DC information is Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics.
http://dcindexes.com/index.htm

On there he has an impressive list of comic book covers and assorted merchandise. He also has his "Time Machine" that lists DC comics by their cover date. It looks like for the annuals he places them in the general area that they came out.

On there he has the Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 as coming out with the August, 1982 titles. Which would put it around May, 1982 in real time.

That's the way I do it as well and though I don't have every annual that came out that year, here are the ones I DO have:

Avengers Annual 8 (cover dated 1978) shipped with the books cover dated Jan. 1979 (which, technically, came out in Sept/Oct 1978).

Avengers Annual 9 came out with the Oct.79 books

FF Annual 14 came out with the Dec.79 books

Marvel Two-In-One Annual 4 - Sep.79

Thor Annual 8 - Nov.79

Others released with a 1979 cover date were:

Amazing Spider-Man Annual 13

Incredible Hulk Annual 8

Marvel Team-Up Annual 2

Spectacular Spider-Man Annual 1

Star Wars Annual 1

and X-Men Annual 3 (Perez/Austin art!!!! drooooooool)

Trev, I'll be expecting an acknowledgement in the volumes containing these books!

Thanks, guys! Those sites are godsends. One more, the Annuals generally announced in the Bullpen Bulletins and/or letters pages of their respective books? I'm wondering if I've missed some in my book binding already, but I haven't seen any mention of 'em in the books themselves yet.

Not always, no.

kdb

They generally weren't mentioned in the regular titles unless they (the annuals) somehow impacted on the stroylines themselves. They were occasionally mentioned in the Bullpen Bulletins pages until the early/mid eighties when they started running the Mighty Marvel Checklists and they were listed in with the regular titles.

It should be noted that the Bullpen Bulletins pages are another excellent way to tell when a Marvel Annual came out as they would sometimes be printed in the Annuals too!