Should Star-Lord have an Annual?

[IamGroot]

Was just thinking how Star-Lord's current series last regular issue will be #6 in April and then there is also a Annual scheduled for May.

My question is if a series can't make it to 12 issues (or actively releases for a year) and is either planned to end early or cancelled, should it even get an Annual? kinda misses the point of what an Annual is in my mind is all.

[Mike_Murdock]

An Annual is an excuse to release something during 5-week months. It's always been that and always will be that. There's nothing special about it and they're often subpar rather than better.

[Inversed]

I think Annual nowadays is just a way of saying "BONUS ISSUE", since there isn't really a pattern for when they come out to have them released "annually", not to mention some comics will get Annuals over others for no specific reason.

I think maybe they wanted Chris Zdarsky to write a Star-Lord story when he's actually in space, so they made this Annual as a bonus. I know the same thing happened with Ant-Man a few years back, it ran for 5 issues, and then a month later got an Annual as a bonus story.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, Ant-Man had a five issue run a couple of years ago, then an annual that introduced the new Giant-Man, and then a Last Days one-shot, before getting a longer run by the same team after Secret Wars that ended a couple of months ago.

And you're right about the other thing, Annuals used to be a fifth week filler, and still are at DC. But Marvel no longer releases things on that strict a schedule, so their annuals do seem to be placed randomly.