Coming soon from TwoMorrows Publishing:
Comic Book Implosion
Things looked bleak for comic books throughout the 1970s because of
plummeting sell-through rates. With each passing year, the newsstand
became less and less interested in selling comic books. The industry
seemed locked in a death spiral, but the Powers That Be at DC Comics had
an idea to reverse their fortunes.
In 1978, they implemented a bold
initiative: Provide readers with more story pages by increasing the
price-point of a regular comic book to make it comparable to other
magazines sold on newsstands.
Billed as “The DC Explosion,” this
expansion saw the introduction of numerous creative new titles.
But mere
weeks after its launch, DC’s parent company pulled the plug, demanding a
drastic decrease in the number of comic books they published, and
leaving stacks of completed comic book stories unpublished. The series
of massive cutbacks and cancellations quickly became known as “The DC
Implosion.”
TwoMorrows Publishing marks the 40th Anniversary of one of
the most notorious events in comics with an exhaustive oral history from
the creators and executives involved (Jenette Kahn, Paul Levitz, Len
Wein, Mike Gold, and Al Milgrom, among many others), as well as detailed
analysis and commentary by other top professionals, who were “just
fans” in 1978 (Mark Waid, Michael T. Gilbert, Tom Brevoort, and
more)—examining how it changed the landscape of comics forever! By Keith
Dallas and John Wells.
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