DC Implosion

DC Implosion

The DC Implosion is the popular label for the sudden cancellation of more than two dozen ongoing and planned series of the American comics published DC Comics in 1978.

Contents

History

The name is a sardonic reference to the "DC Explosion", a then-recent marketing campaign in which DC began publishing more monthly titles and increased the number of story pages in all of its titles, accompanied by higher cover prices.[1] (Overall, DC premiered 57 new titles from 1975 to 1978.) Many titles which had been cancelled in the 1960s and earlier in the 1970s had been brought back as part of the "Explosion," intended to increase the company's market presence and profitability.

Since the early 1970s, DC had seen its dominance of the market overtaken by Marvel Comics, partly because Marvel had significantly increased the number of titles it published (both original material and reprint books). In large part, the DC Explosion was a plan to overtake Marvel at its own game.

DC instead experienced ongoing poor sales in winter 1977. This has been attributed in part to blizzards in 1977 and 1978, which both disrupted distribution and curtailed consumer purchases.[2] Furthermore, the effects of ongoing economic inflation, recession, and increased paper and printing costs cut into the profitability of the entire comic book industry, coupled with steadily decreasing numbers of readers. In response, company executives ordered that titles with marginal sales and several new series still in development be cancelled.[2] During these meetings, it was decided that DC's long-running flagship title Detective Comics was to be terminated with #480, until the decision was overturned following strenuous arguments on behalf of saving the title within the DC office, and Detective was instead merged with the better-selling Batman Family.

Cancelled titles

Twenty series were cancelled abruptly, with the following as their final issue:

1978 cancellations unrelated to the DC Implosion

Eleven other titles were cancelled in 1978, for the most part "planned" cancellations announced in DC promos and in the final issues of the comics themselves.

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade

Overall, about thirty titles were affected. Much of the unpublished work saw print in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade, a Summer 1978 two-issue ashcan "series" which "published" the work in limited quantity solely to establish the company's copyright.[2][3][4] The title was a play on DC's 1940s series Comic Cavalcade. Some of the material already produced for the cancelled publications was later used in other series, however. The two volumes, composed of some of these stories along with earlier inventoried stories, were printed by DC staff members in black-and-white on the office photocopier. A total of 35 copies of each volume were produced, and distributed to the creators of the material, to the U.S. copyright office, and to Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as proof of their existence.

Contents ranged from completed stories to incomplete artwork. Although color covers were created, the interior pages (having been reproduced on a photocopier in the days prior to widespread use of color photocopy technology) were black and white. The first issue carried a cover price of only 10 cents, while the second carried a cover price of $1, but this was in jest, as the publication was never actually "sold".

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade contained the following material:

Issue #1

Issue #2

Unpublished titles

Among the new series planned, but never published:[2]

  • Demand Classics (reprint series) with "Flash of Two Worlds" planned for #1.
  • Deserter (a Western)
  • Vixen (would have been the first series starring an African-American superheroine; the character later appeared in Justice League of America). A back-up feature with Harlequin would have begun with #2.
  • Western Classics (reprint series)
  • Starslayer (a Mike Grell creation later published by Pacific Comics[6] and First Comics)

Five secondary features were planned, but the titles in which three were to appear were cancelled before the stories were produced; the reasons the two planned for Adventure Comics were left unreleased are unknown:

References

  1. ^ Kahn, Jenette. "Publishorial: Onward and Upward," DC Comics cover-dated September 1978.
  2. ^ a b c d Kimball, Kirk. "Secret Origins of the DC Implosion, Part One," Dial B for Blog.
  3. ^ "An Editorial of Sorts," Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #1 (Summer 1978): "Just to make it official -- CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer 1978, DC Comics, Inc.
  4. ^ McAvennie, Michael; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1970s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. "With the devasting DC Implosion, a majority of the thirty-one titles terminated in 1978 were canceled in the middle of storylines. Therefore, staff members "published", in extremely limited quantities, two volumes of Cancelled Comic Cavalcade." 
  5. ^ Grabois, Michael. "The Deserter," Cancelled Comic Cavalcade fan page (Sept. 7, 1995). Accessed Oct. 26, 2008.
  6. ^ per Amazing Heroes #2 (July 1981) page 14: "Grell's Starslayer Debuts in July" "Starslayer, a new comic book created, written, and drawn by Mike Grell debuts in July from Pacific Comics. The series was originally offered to DC Comics but was shelved in 1978 at the time of the "DC Implosion."

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