Cancelled Comic Cavalcade
Cancelled Comics Cavalcade was a tongue-in-cheek publication reproduced in the offices of DC Comics in very limited quantity following the "DC Implosion" in 1978. It featured material that was originally intended for series which were abruptly cancelled. Because of its scarcity and its significance to the history of the publisher, original copies are highly sought by collectors, and it is widely bootlegged.
History
In 1978, rather than raising the prices of their books by five cents in response to inflation, DC increased prices from 35 cents all the way to 50 cents, but substantially increased the number of story pages in each issue. This was promoted - along with the launch of new series - as the "DC Explosion". However, executives at Warner Publishing (which had purchased DC two years earlier) responded to poor sales figures (worsened in part by bad weather and shipping delays the previous winter) and instructed DC to immediately reduce their output to twenty titles of 32 pages each, priced at 40 cents. Industry observers quickly dubbed this the "DC Implosion".
These abrupt cancellations left a substantial amount of finished and nearly-finished material that would not be published. Ostensibly to secure the company's copyright in the material, DC staff members "published" some of these stories in black and white on the office photocopier, in two blank-covered volumes. 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. The title is a play on the DCs 1950s funny animal series Comic Cavalcade.
Contents
Cancelled Comics Cavalcade contained the following material:
issue #1
- Black Lightning #12, cover to #13
- Claw #13 and #14
- The Deserter #1
- Doorway to Nightmare #6
- Firestorm #6 (later adapted as back-up stories in The Flash)
- The Green Team #2 and #3
issue #2
- Kamandi #60 and #61
- Prez #5
- Shade, the Changing Man #9
- Showcase #105 (featuring Deadman, later mostly printed in Adventure Comics), #106 (the Creeper)
- Secret Society of Super-Villains #16, #17
- Steel #6, later reprinted with edits in All-Star Squadron
- The Vixen #1
- covers for Army at War #2, Battle Classics #3, Demand Classics #1 and #2, Mister Miracle #26, Ragman #6, Weird Mystery #25 and #26, Western Classics #1 and #2