Clipped from Wikipedia:
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.
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. (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. 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.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.
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