Atlantis Attacks holds a special place in my heart because they were prominently displayed at my LCS the summer of 1989 when I first went inside and decided to start collecting comics.

I was amazed at the ambition of having *every* annual tie-in to a cohesive story, although I later learned that the 1988 annuals did that as well with the Evolutionary War.

No idea what the story was like, since the only ones I ultimately read were New Mutants, X-Men and Punisher.

Never knew about the three additional tie-ins either. Cool stuff!

2 hours ago, Gatsby77 said:

Atlantis Attacks holds a special place in my heart because they were prominently displayed at my LCS the summer of 1989 when I first went inside and decided to start collecting comics.

I was amazed at the ambition of having *every* annual tie-in to a cohesive story, although I later learned that the 1988 annuals did that as well with the Evolutionary War.

No idea what the story was like, since the only ones I ultimately read were New Mutants, X-Men and Punisher.

Never knew about the three additional tie-ins either. Cool stuff!

Nuts!  I did not know about the Evolutionary War arc in 1988.  I collect FF related stuff and they are in the mix for that series so may have to think about tracking that lot down.

Not to add to your want list but for my money the coolest thing Marvel did in 1989 was "Acts of Vengeance" -- it ran for three months through most of the core monthly titles. The idea was simple: the villains just switched it up. So Thor villains fought Dr. Strange, X-Men villains (and Doctor Doom) fought The Punisher, Spider-Man fought Magneto, etc.

No idea how many books it ultimately ran through, but each of the issues clearly has "Acts of Vengeance" noted in the upper right-hand corner.

I think the biggest lasting change from that storyline is the Mandarin turned Psylocke from British to Japanese - changing her entire look, costume, and powers in the process.

As I said, I first got into comics in 1989, so Atlantis Attacks, Batman, and Acts of Vengeance are the first things I really remember.

I took a look at the "Acts of Vengeance" story back in the day but passed on that one.  (According to one website that tracks such things, it involved 71 different issues.)  Marvel had a number of broad "events" over the years that played out sort of scatter-shot across a lot of titles.  My completely arbitrary rule (so I did not go broke) was that there had to be a core series of some kind and it had to involve the FF.  "Atlantis Attacks" (and probably "Evolutionary War" as well) qualified because there was a set series.  When you finished the story in one Marvel annual, it stated that the story was continued and told you which annual was next.  I tried to stay away from series that had a kazillion tie-ins although I did get sucked into Secret Wars II.  That was a nine-issue mini-series that had over 30 tie-ins.  I did eventually track all of those down.