A further look at CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #1, the home-printed volume comprised of stories that DC Comics was writing off as their line was dramatically downsized in 1978 in what became known as the DC Implosion.
CLAW THE UNCONQUERED, one of DC’s more successful series in capturing a percentage of the market for barbarian sword and sorcery adventure that had been opened by Marvel’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN was a casualty of the downsizing. And in fact, it was far enough into production that two whole issues’ worth of material were included in CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #1. This is the cover to what would have been CLAW THE UNCONQUERED #14 as produced by Joe Kubert. Kubert was a cover artist whose services were in demand all across the line, but especially on the non-super hero titles.
While this issue picks up directly from the events of the never-published CLAW #13, a new name has been added to what would have been the credits. Rather than the series’ creator David , this particular story wound up being written by Tom DeFalco. DeFalco had gotten his start working for Archie Comics and then had branched out to Charlton and DC, and eventually Marvel.
The editor of CLAW at this moment, Larry Hama, was one of those let go as part of the company’s restructuring–the layoffs were handled in a last-hired-first-fired manner, so Hama and Al Milgrom, as the two newest additions to the DC staff, were the ones served their walking papers. Hama was multi-faceted and multi-talented, and it wasn’t too long before he wound up over at Marvel as an editor and writer.
Like CLAW THE UNCONQUERED #13, this issue’s contents also never found a home, and are so-far unpublished.
In a bit of an editorial mishap, Dalivar is for this entire story referred to as Validarr. Possibly, somebody woud have caught this mistake in the proofreading process before the book was sent to teh printer.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Years ago, I interviewed Tom — if I remember correctly, it was after I’d sold a script to DC but before I’d sold one to Marvel — and he told me that he’d always wanted to write CONAN, and that’s a big part of what moved him along from Archie to DC to Marvel (though I assume making a living was a large part of it too). But he mentioned getting to write CLAW and the sword-and-sorcery version of STARFIRE at DC, and enjoying them, even though not everything got published. And then he moved over to Marvel with the idea that he’d get to write CONAN at some point.
I’m not sure he ever did, though he wrote some RED SONJA, and of course THOR would have scratched some of that itch. And he did some sword & sorcery/barbarian material in RANDY O’DONNELL IS THE M@N and KHAN.
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