*DC: We are pleased to have acquired possibly the single rarest DC Comic – or we should say Comics, since they come as a set – to be issued since the Golden Age. In June 1978, DC Comics, having recently expanded the content, price and number of titles they issued, was abruptly forced to contract their line in the wake of the infamous ‘DC Implosion’. Line-wide cancellations and a drop in their comics’ page count left them with a mound of material in various stages of preparation, which seemed destined to remain unpublished. This included work by Kubert, Ditko, Kirby and many other significant talents. Cancelled Comics Cavalcade was a black and white Xeroxed two-volume collection of all the stories and covers that had to be shelved because of the cancellations, produced to protect the copyrights on all the material by getting it into print, as well as to provide the creators with copies of their work. Al Milgrom and Alex Saviuk were commissioned to create two brand-new covers, and the entire inventory of unpublished material (including some series cancelled a couple of years Pre-Implosion) was photocopied into two telephone-book sized volumes in black and white, with unassuming plain blue outer covers. Paul Kupperberg, who did the copying, confirms that there were only 40 copies made. Contents include Black Lightning, The Deserter, Doorway Into Nightmare, and Firestorm (Vol. 1), Kamandi, Shade, Deadman, Vixen and the Secret Society of Super-Villains (Vol. 2). Clocking in at 200 and 204 pages respectively, these offer not only a great deal of still-unpublished material (though some has been subsequently repurposed), but an insight into the process of comics creation in the 1970s. Since they are photocopies, there are of course ‘bootlegs’ out there; we have provenance – a DC interior memo identifying this set of two as the ones issued to writer Michael Fleischer. Although these don’t fit into the usual parameters of comics grading, we have categorised both volumes as FN+; light wear and some slight marking to the exterior blue covers, with interior pages unmarred apart from some inevitable light yellowing due to age. Priced at £3000 for both volumes of this extremely rare item. Images below show outer and inner covers, plus provenance. NB This set is not kept on our premises, and viewing is STRICTLY by appointment only.