It must have been such a grind to get writers, pencillers, inkers, 

letterers, and colourists to all do their jobs for a regular monthly book that it puzzles me how the extra workload of an annual could be fit in?

I was never a fan of US annuals. They often fell like fill-ins (to me).

Instead, JB's run on AF have us three double issues (by issue 24 no less), all in contunity and with the sense of real event. Was there ever any other on-going Marvel comic of the time that could rival that?

But it seemed after that that they became part of giant company crossover stories. And then, the annuals had a theme, and they became the practice ground for new writers and authors, as a soft of showcase for this new talent. And exactly as Mr. Byrne points out, they were dumping ground.

This is when I gave up on them, and on most comics; it was a contributing factor. DC had annual crossovers including: new international heroes (I imagined editors saying, "Hey, somebody has to hit like Superman or Spider-Man did, right?" - also known as the crap on the wall method of new characters, who just became superfluous characters to later be eliminated); "ghosts"; the JLA becoming gorillas,etc. Marvel made company-wide crossovers which had to be huge, overblown affairs that every book HAD to participate in, thus interrupting up storylines in the regular books. And how easy is it to create an earth shaking problem requiring the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the Silver Surfer before they become rather commonplace?

And in fact, I recall that Alpha Flight DID get into an Annual for Marvel Team-Up. I can't remember the story, but I recall that it wasn't very memorable.

Not concentrating on particularly good stories - but keep flinging that crap against that wall, guys. Better to be lucky than talented.

***

I bought that. It's a Collector story and heavily features Marrina. Also, like pretty much every other AF appearance that happened in other titles during AF's run it does not fit into the team's timeline at all. (I'm working from memory but IIRC it is clear that Marrina has had no contact with the team between the two Master of the Universe arcs.)

One of the strengths of JB's AF was that it was relationships between characters and when they had last met was always clear, but this was continually ignored by writers on other titles.