THE IDEA OF A COMICS ANNUAL isn't an especially new one, not even at the beginning of the 1960s when DC published Superman Annual 1 (Aug 1960). The earliest annual I could find in US comics was Archie Annual 1 (1950). By the time that was published, Archie had been established as a leading comics character for almost a decade. It must have seemed like a good idea to other comics publishers because pretty quickly, other annuals started appearing on the newsstands. During the 1950s, the concept of comic annuals was an interesting novelty. Where the UK comics market had had annuals for years, it took quite a few years before the American publishers caught on. Click image to enlarge. Tales of Terror Annual 1 was published in 1951 by EC, though unlike the Archie Annual that contained 116 pages of new material, canny Bill Gaines just stitched four coverless issues of assorted EC comics into a new cover. A year after that Dell Comics put out Tarzan's Jungle Annual 1 (1952), feat...
AS THE DAYS of Marty Goodman's Atlas Comics drew to a close in the late 1950s, the publisher was casting around for the Next Big Thing. Locked in to a draconian distribution contract with arch rivals DC Comics, Goodman was limited to a tight eight titles per month and if he needed to launch a new title, he was forced to cancel an existing one. So, feeling that mystery and science fiction was the coming trend Goodman decided to launch three new comics to complement the existing Journey into Mystery, World of Fantasy and Strange Tales titles. The new books were Strange Worlds , beginning in December 1958 and replacing the cancelled Navy Combat , and Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish , both debuting in January 1959, replacing the cancelled Homer the Happy Ghost and Miss America . Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales had been around since the twilight of the Golden Age and changed in content according to Martin Goodman's take on his customers' tastes. So they bega...