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. 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. 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.

DC Comics was instead experiencing ongoing poor sales in winter 1977. This has been attributed in part to blizzards in 1977 and 1978.[citation needed] In response, company executives ordered that titles with marginal sales and several new series still in development be cancelled. During these meetings, it was decided that DC Comics' long-running flagship title Detective Comics was to be cancelled with #480, until the decision was overturned and Detective was instead merged with the better-selling Batman Family.

Overall, about thirty titles were affected. Much of the unpublished work saw print in Cancelled Comic Cavalcade, a two-issue "series" which "published" the work in limited quantity solely to establish the company's copyright.[citation needed] Some of the material already produced for the cancelled publications was later used in other series, however.

[edit] 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).

[edit] Unpublished titles

Six new series were planned, but never published:

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

[edit] External links

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