The "DC Explosion" and "DC Implosion" were two events in 1978 – the first an official marketing campaign, the second a sardonic reference to it – in which DC Comics expanded their roster of publications, then abruptly cut it back. The DC Explosion was part of an ongoing initiative at DC to regain market share by increasing the number of titles they published, while also increasing page counts and cover prices. The so-called "DC Implosion" was the result of the publisher experiencing losses that year due to a confluence of factors, and cancelling a large number of ongoing and planned series in response. The cancellations included long-running series such as Our Fighting Forces, Showcase, and House of Secrets; new series introduced as part of the expansion such as Firestorm and Steel: The Indestructible Man; and announced series such as The Vixen which would have been the company's first title starring an African-American woman. Former flagship series Detective Comics was also considered for cancellation. Some of the material already produced for these cancelled series was used in other publications. Several of the completed stories were "published" in small quantities as two issues of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, whose title was a reference to DC's Golden-Age Comic Cavalcade series. History The DC Explosion was a 1978 marketing campaign in which DC touted its increasing number of titles in the previous few years and increased story pages in all of its titles, accompanied by higher cover prices. The Explosion campaign itself lasted three months from its debut in comics cover-dated June 1978 until the revamp in comics cover-dated September 1978. The actual implosion at the company then followed with cancellations and a reduction in the number of titles. 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 4 more titles by the end of the year. DC added 14 titles in 1976 and 4 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