DC's Excellent Annuals

I've been furiosly reading comics lately as I try and catch up. My guess is that I'm roughly 6 weeks behind. This week I finally read the Nightwing and Outsiders Annuals. Both tried to bridge the gap in the One Year Later story gaps. Both were phenomenal.

Judd Winick (who is the regular writer on the Outsiders) wrote the Outsiders Annual which was drawn by Scott McDaniel. They told a great story about how the team rescued Black Lightning from prison with the help of a then still villain Captain Boomerang, how the Captain (and Metamorpho) ended up on the team, and how and why they faked their death. It also set the stage for how much Roy Harper has grown and how he ended up in the Justice League. While I've never been in love with McDaniels art, I though his art was serviceable.

Nightwings Annual written by Marc Andreyko with pencils by Joe Bennett was also brilliant. It told the story of the relationship between Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson. Everything from the very beginning. It is such an important part of the history of the DC Universe. A must read for any fan of the Batman family. It was very emotional and tender as well as doing a great job of setting up A) Dick going away with Bruce for a year and B) how he ended up in New York in his own title.

With how strong these two annuals were it made me wonder "why didnt DC do this with all the titles that were affected in One Year Later". Instead of burdening the regular series with explaining what happend, why not have a single oversized issue that explained everything. It made too much sense to me. I'm not complaining about DC. I think they've been putting out a far superior product to their crosstown rivals over the last few years, I just think they messed up in this instance. I think it would have made far more sense to tie up the missing year stories in annuals for all the titles.