In my latest podcast episode, I looked at three issues of Batman that came out between A Death in the Family and the Year 3/A Lonely Place of Dying storylines, which are about the death of Jason Todd and then the introduction of Tim Drake. Of course, Tim doesn’t officially become Robin until about a year and a half after Batman #442, in which he puts on Jason’s old costume and we have the iconic George Perez cover of him swinging into action. But once that happened, everyone more or less knew that Tim was going to be the next Robin.

What I had wanted to see was how the Batman was handled in those three issues, which were #430-432 of his main series (and if you listened to the episode you know that I mentioned The Many Deaths of Batman but it seemed more like a fill-in arc and less of an “in-the-moment in-continuity” storyline) but had to skip Batman Annual #13, which came out during that period but is not available on DC Infinite nor was collected in the trade paperbacks I own from that era (it is available in Batman: The Caped Crusader Vol. 2, which also reprints Year 3 but omits Lonely Place, probably because that has been folded into the trade for A Death in the Family). Well, I was at my LCS the other day and decided to see if they had it and lo and behold a copy in very good condition was available for $1.99, so I grabbed it and decided to offer up a review of it here as an addendum to that podcast episode.

I could go into a whole history of comic book annuals, which began back in the 1960s (I believe) and very often reprinted old stories. They were always bigger than the regular issues–about two or two-and-a-half times bigger–and cost about as much. Batman had seven annuals published in the early 1960s (which were about twice a year and therefore semi-annuals) and then those editions as we know them began in earnest with Batman Annual #8 in 1981. DC would begin crossovers and themes with the annuals in 1991 with Armageddon 2001 (a story near and dear to my heart that I may get around to one day), but during the 1980s, the books were simply oversized stories that sometimes had backup stories and extra features. All had similar trade dress and for 1989, that trade dress was a bar running down the left side of the cover with a rundown of the creative team and what was in the book.

For this annual, the copy on the left side advertised a story by James Oswley (now known as Christopher Priest), with art by Michael Bair and Gray Morrow; a backup story featuring “secrets of the DC Universe” told by Kevin Dooley and Malcolm Jones III; and a set of updated Who’s Who entries (which Rob and Shag covered years ago on the Who’s Who podcast). The cover is by George Pratt and fhows Batman sitting on a snow-covered rooftop, a picture that is slightly obscured by snow blowing around hiim, but we can certainly see the blue and gray uniform of our hero. Personally, I think it looks pretty cool and while it is more of a pinup and has nothing to do with the story inside (as opposed to the Detective Comics annual that year, which had a Klansman on the cover because the Klan were the villains of that book), I’ve always been drawn to it. I don’t know why I always thought this issue was somehow special because of that cover, but it felt that way.