Cancelled-Comic-Cavalcade-1-Page-1The legendary “DC Implosion” of June 1978 (leading to the sudden cancellation of twenty-six new titles that were in various states of production when the hammer fell) lead to the creation of another legend:

Cancelled Comics Cavalcade.

CCC was a black and white Xeroxed two-volume collection of all the stories and covers that had to be shelved because of the cancellations. The nominal excuse (the one given DC president Sol Harrison to get the okay to go ahead) was to protect the copyrights on all the material by getting it into print, as well as to provide the talent with copies of their work.

The real reasons were (a) to see if we could get away with it, and (b) to create a collectible. We were young, it was the Seventies, and we felt that every act should carry at least some small amount of defiance, especially against our corporate masters (no shit; we talked that way). I gathered up the unprinted material, it was assembled into the two volumes, Al Milgrom and Alex Saviuk were commissioned to provide the covers, and then I brought the pages down to the Warner Communications print shop in the basement of 75 Rockefeller Center where the magic was done, creating forty printed and bound copies of CCC #1 and #2 (the covers were also in black and white; these colorized versions are pulled from the internet).

Cancelled-Comic-Cavalcade-2-Page-1

Two copies went to the DC Library, one went to the legal department, a copy each to several DC execs, me, another editor, and to the creators whose work was included, as well as one copy to Robert Overstreet. The latter was for the (b) part of the plan, i.e. creating a collectible by getting it listed, as a rarity, in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. There are officially thirty-five copies in print, but a slight printing, ahem, overrun resulted in 40 copies.

The first thing I did when the copies were delivered to my cubicle was to type up this official Cancelled Comic Cavalcade Bibliography. (For a full rundown on the contents of CCC, check out Bob Rozakis’ fine blog, here and here. Thanks, Bob!)

CanComCav_1

CanComCav_2

CanComCav_3

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments on Obscurities: The Official Cancelled Comics Cavalcade TOC

  1. Bob Rozakis says:

    For those who are interested in a recap of the material in the two volumes of CCC, I politely refer you to http://bobrozakis.blogspot.com.....omics.html and http://bobrozakis.blogspot.com.....omics.html

  2. Lou Mougin says:

    Too bad we didn’t get the unpublished ish of SWAMP THING in there, but of course it was cancelled before the Implosion. Can’t have everything!

Leave a Reply to Paul Kupperberg Cancel reply