DC Implosion  The DC Implosion is the popular label for the sudden cancellation of more than 24 ongoing and planned series by the American comics publisher DC Comics in 1978. The name is a sardonic reference to the DC Explosion, a 1978 marketing campaign in which DC touted its increasing number of titles and increased story pages in all of its titles, accompanied by higher cover prices. The Explosion itself lasted three months from its debut in comics cover-dated June 1978 until the revamp in comics cover-dated September 1978. 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 that it published (both original material and reprint books). In large part, the DC Explosion was a plan to overtake Marvel by using its own strategy. DC's expansion actually began in earnest in 1975, when the company debuted 12 titles in the spring and summer, followed by four more titles by the end of the year. DC added 14 titles in 1976 and four more in 1977. However, DC experienced ongoing poor sales from the winter of 1977 to the winter of 1978. This has been attributed in part to the North American blizzards in 1977 and 1978, which both disrupted distribution and curtailed consumer purchases. Furthermore, the effects of ongoing economic inflation, recession, and increased paper and printing costs, led to declines in both the profitability of the entire comic book industry and the number of readers. In response, company executives ordered that titles with marginal sales and several new series that were still in development be cancelled. 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". On June 22, 1978, DC Comics announced staff layoffs and the cancellation of approximately 40% of its line. Editors Al Milgrom and Larry Hama were two of the employees laid off. As a result of the Implosion, 17 series were cancelled abruptly. Fourteen 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. The following titles were cancelled due to the Implosion, with the following as their final issue:    About 30 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.