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DC Implosion

 
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The DC Implosion is the popular label for the sudden cancellation of more than two dozen ongoing and planned DC Comics series 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 canceled 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 Comics was instead experiencing 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 canceled.[2] During these meetings, it was decided that DC Comics' 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:

Shazam! #35 ("merged" into World's Finest Comics), Karate Kid #15, and Freedom Fighters #15 were cancelled a few months before the Implosion, to make room for other titles in the DC Explosion. Similarly, the New Gods feature was concluded in Adventure Comics #459 and 460. All were announced within the comics themselves as being cancelled, and unlike Implosion titles, the Freedom Fighters and Karate Kid even had ending stories published (though the Freedom Fighters ending continued in Secret Society of Super-Villains, which did fall victim to the Implosion). Our Fighting Forces, after 181 issues, was also cancelled (with its September/October issue), but this was apparently unrelated to the DC Implosion.

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade #2

Overall, about thirty titles were affected. Much of the unpublished work saw print in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade, a Summer 1978 two-issue "series" which "published" the work in limited quantity solely to establish the company's copyright.[2][3] (The title was a play on the DCs 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 Comics Cavalcade contained the following material:

Issue #1

Issue #2

Unpublished titles

Six new series were planned, but never published:[2]

Three secondary features were planned, but the titles in which they were to appear were cancelled before the stories were produced:

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, published twice in a lifetime by DC Comics, Inc., 75 Rockerfeller Plaza, New York, N.Y., 10019. Copyright © 1978 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved. The stories, characters, and incidents mentioned in this publication are entirely fictional. No actual persons, living or dead, are intended or should be inferred. Printed in the U.S.A."

  4. ^ Grabois, Michael. "The Deserter," Cancelled Comic Cavalcade fan page (Sept. 7, 1995). Accessed Oct. 26, 2008.

External links


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