Last year, Marvel did an “Annuals Events” starring High Evolutionary, and this year even more annuals participate as Atlantis attacks: It took 14 extra-sized issues to tell the story.
Not that it’s super complicated. A mystic villain teams up with Attuma to gather the shattered pieces of the Serpent Crown in an effort to bring the god Set to Earth. So it’s not really Atlantis attacking—it’s just Attuma.
And he fails. It’s a lot of pages devoted to a story that really amounts to less-than-nothing.
Rather than tag all the annuals here separately, I’m just putting an “Atlantis Attacks Annual Event” marker on the “1989” page, and noting here that these are the books covered by this post:
- Silver Surfer Annual #2
- Iron Man Annual #10
- X-Men Annual #13
The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #23- The Punisher Annual #2. Non-Atlantis Attacks stories covered here.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #9
- Daredevil Annual #5
- Avengers Annual #18
- New Mutants Annual #5
- X-Factor Annual #4
- Web of Spider-Man Annual #5
- Avengers West Coast Annual #4
- Thor Annual
- Fantastic Four Annual #22
The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #23Each issue had an installment of the encyclopediac back up feature titled, “The Serpent Crown Saga,” which basically tied together (and filled in gaps between) all the prior Serpent Crown stories. It was written by Peter Sanderson with art by Mark Bagley.
This event also kind of competed with the build-up to Acts of Vengeance, a line-wide event that hammered its way through all the Marvel books at the beginning of 1990. AKA: The beginning of the end of great Marvel books.
I don’t have a lot to say here. The title is pretty much a full explanation of the event. I will note a few things, like, first, it was a very disappointing first meeting between Moon Knight and Punisher.
They’re two of my favorite characters, but the story doesn’t do much with them.
The Iron Man story was called “There are no wire hangers underwater!”
This whole thing is just lazy.