Unlike Marvel Comics, DC Comics never had an "official" Editor-in-Chief until Jenette Kahn took the title in 1989. However, the company did have a number of editors that radically changed both DC and comics in general.
Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson (1935-1938)
Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was a writer and editor, best known, prior to 1935, as a writer of war and military stories. In 1935, he founded a company named National Allied Publications and became a pioneer in this new emerging field of publishing, since he published the very first comic book of brand new material entitled New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine in February 1935. Prior to this, all of the comic books have been either made up entirely or mostly of reprinted materials from newspaper comic strips, with a small smattering of original material. New Fun was entirely new material, something which hadn't been seen before, but which would become the norm going forward. New Fun Comics (as it was re-titled) also featured the debut of writers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster before their big hit, Superman.
In December 1935, Wheeler-Nicholson published a second comic book of new material simply titled New Comics. This would become New Adventure Comics with issue #12 and, finally, Adventure Comics with issue #32. This would become one of the longest running continually published titles in DC Comics, ending in 1983 with issue #503 and then seeing a brief revival from 2009 to 2011 and ending again with #529.
The last book Wheeler-Nicholson would publish would be Detective Comics and he didn't have the money to do it all himself, so, instead, he formed a partnership with Harry Donenfeld, who was the printing-plant owner and magazine distributor that Wheeler-Nicholson owed money to. Wheeler-Nicholson and Donenfeld formed Detective Comics, Inc. (with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners) and published the first Detective Comics in March 1937. In 1938, however, either due to the pressures of the Great Depression or because Donenfeld pushed him out, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was forced to give up his ownership to Donenfeld of both Detective Comics, Inc. and National Allied Publications.
Donenfeld quickly merged both companies together to create National Comics Publications and started publishing a new book in April 1938 called Action Comics. The first issue introduced a new superhero called Superman, while the next year, in March 1939, Detective Comics #27 introduced another hero named Batman.
Max Gaines (1934-1944)
Max Gaines (or M.C. Gaines) was the other equation in the comic book industry — he was a writer and editor who kicked off the development of comic books by reprinting collections of comic strips, with the first being Famous Funnies in 1934. This was published by East Color Printing and featured early work from an artist by the name of Jack Kirby. Gaines, however, would see what Wheeler-Nicholson was doing with National Allied Publications and decide to do the same thing, founding All-American Publications and publishing All-American Comics #1 in April 1939. This featured new stories alongside reprints. Gaines would quickly start publishing more, with Flash Comics and All Star Comics starting in 1940, All-Flash in 1941, and Sensation Comics starting in 1942.
A large number of classic superheroes were introduced in Gaines's books: the original Alan Scott Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite, the original Jay Garrick Flash, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific, Wonder Woman, and the Justice Society of America.
Gaines had sought funding for his books from Harry Donenfeld, who insisted that Max take on Jack S. Liebowitz as his partner, making Gaines the principal and Liebowitz the minority owner of All-American Publications. In 1944, however, Gaines was said to have seen the end of superhero comics and sold his shares to Liebowitz, maintaining ownership of only one book (Picture Stories from the Bible). Donenfeld then merged All-American Comics and National Comic Publications together to make National Comics and, finally, merged that with Independent News to make National Periodical Publications. National Periodical Publications would become better known as "Superman-DC" or, simply, DC Comics.
Gaines would go on to found Educational Comics or EC Comics, which his son, William Gaines, would take over after his father's death in 1947. William Gaines would then transform the company into a publisher of horror comics, alongside one parody magazine called MAD. Ironically, in the '60s, William Gaines would sell EC Comics to the Kinney National Company, who would later buy National Periodical Publishing.
Irwin Donenfeld (1952-1968)
By the 1950s, the superhero genre was all but dead and National Periodical Publications had moved on to publishing other genres such as science fiction, Westerns, humor, and romance. Harry Donenfeld's son, Irwin Donenfeld, had become a co-owner of National in 1948 and become the company's editorial director and Executive Vice President. It was Irwin that decided they needed to maintain the trademarks on all the superheroes, so instructed editor Julius Schwartz to come up with a new Flash story for an experimental anthology comic Showcase.
Schwartz, whose background was from science fiction, brought in writers Gardner Fox and Robert Kanigher to create a brand new hero, rather than simply use the old one. Using penciler Carmine Infantino and inker Joe Kubert, they created Barry Allen, the new Flash, and ushered in the Silver Age. Showcase #4 would be published in October 1956 and become a smash hit. This led to the major revamping of old characters and introduction of new ones, including a new Green Lantern, a new Atom, and many others. Eventually, in another anthology comic called The Brave and the Bold, Julius Schwartz had Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky create the Justice League of America, an updated version of the Justice Society of America.
Even though Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman had been continually published, Donenfeld still decided to revamp them for more modern audiences. Mort Weisinger took over the Superman titles and had them introduce new characters such as Supergirl, Bizarro, and Brainiac, while Robert Kanigher had a long run as writer and editor of Wonder Woman, turning it into a title aimed at little girls, featuring an entire family of Wonder Woman characters like Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot. Editor Jack Schiff was slightly less successful with the Batman titles, introducing Batwoman, Bat-Girl, and Bat-Mite, alongside more science fiction elements, but the books were still losing readers. Finally, in 1964, Donenfeld put Schwartz in charge of the Batman titles, which were then revamped to make Batman more of a detective again.
Of particular noteworthiness is the fact that Irwin Donenfeld made sure to meticulously keep track of sales figures for every book DC was publishing in order to figure out what was selling and what wasn't. Per Tom Brevoort
:
- It was through studying these results that Irwin began to develop a sense as to what elements might affect the sell-through of a given comic book; anything that seemed to result in a good sale would be repeated, until some manner of pattern emerged. Famously, he boiled down the effective elements in the 1960s to the following seven items; Gorillas, Dinosaurs, Motorcycles, the City in Flames, the Hero Crying, a Purple Background and A Direct Question to the Readers. Consequently, these ideas were used on covers quite often, to the point where coordination was necessary to prevent every DC title in a given month from featuring a gorilla.
In 1968, editor Dick Giordano was offered a position on DC Comics and brought with him a number of freelancers from Charlton Comics, including Dennis O'Neil. Giordano and O'Neil would reshape DC Comics again, from stripping Wonder Woman of her powers, to teaming up Green Lantern and Green Arrow. In the 1970s, O'Neil and longtime artist collaborator Neal Adams would team up to take over the Batman titles, revitalizing them with new villains like Ra's al-Ghul and reviving old villains like Two-Face and the Joker. Julius Schwartz and Dennis O'Neil would then revitalize the Superman titles, moving them away from the Silver Age and into the Bronze Age.
Shortly after the sale of National Periodical Publications to Kinney National Company in 1967, Irwin Donenfeld was ousted from the company. Kinney would later buy the cash-strapped film company Warner Bros.-Seven Arts and re-brand themselves as Warner Bros. Inc in 1969.
Jenette Kahn (1976-2002)
Jenette Kahn was twenty-eight years old when she was hired by Warner Bros. in 1976 to be the publisher of DC Comics. She had already seen success with publishing previous magazines aimed at children such as Kids, Dynamite, and Smash. At the time, Sol Harrison was president of DC Comics, although when he retired in 1981, Kahn would take his place, becoming the youngest president of a division and the first woman. And to mark the occasion, National Periodical Publications would be officially renamed DC Comics.
Kahn changed the editorial practices at DC, making everything more centralized, while also hiring new staff. (This was helped by the fact that Marvel's Editor-in-Chief at the time, Jim Shooter, was alienating his own staff and Kahn was only happy to hired them away from Marvel.) Kahn would introduce a load of new books and titles in what was called the "DC Explosion," although this was followed in 1978 by a many of them being canceled. This was called the "DC Implosion." Alongside editor and executive vice president Paul Levitz and managing editor Dick Giordano, Kahn revitalized the company during a period of downturn, introducing "Dollar Comics" and the limited series so that creators had more flexible arrangements. She also supported creator's rights, giving creators more royalties than they had seen before. Kahn oversaw such genre-changing books as The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, as well as bringing in what was termed the "British Invasion," writers such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, and Grant Morrison.
In 1989, Jenette Kahn stepped down as publisher and assumed the title of Editor-in-Chief. (There had been editorial directors, executive editors, and managing editors before, but, unlike Marvel, never an Editor-in-Chief.) In 1993, Kahn launched the Vertigo imprint, which published books with more mature themes, as well as creator-owned books, and helped launch Milestone Media, a minority-founded and diverse line of books that DC published for several years.
Kahn also oversaw the diversification of what was an overwhelming male staff at DC. When she finally left in 2002 to pursue a career as a film producer, after 26 years with the company, almost half of the employees were women.
Paul Levitz (2002-2009)
Paul Levitz is a writer and editor best known for his work on Legion of Super-Heroes, writing one of its most famous storylines, "The Great Darkness Saga." Levitz eventually became vice president and executive vice president and then publisher when Kahn stepped down in 1989. When Kahn left as president and EIC in 2002, Levitz became both publisher and president, but eschewed the title of "Editor-in-Chief," due to the "negative results of the title" he'd seen during the tenure of Marvel's former Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter.
Levitz basically continued the trend Kahn had started. In 2009, he stepped down as publisher and president, going back to being a writer and editor, writing a new Legion of Super-Heroes and Worlds' Finest book. In December 2020, he announced his full retirement from DC Comics.
Dan DiDio, Jim Lee, and Bob Harras (2010-2020)
Levitz was essentially replaced by four people. Diane Nelson became the new president of DC Entertainment and appointed Dan DiDio and Jim Lee as co-publishers, while Bob Harras (another former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel) was hired to become DC's new Editor-in-Chief.
DiDio had joined DC Comics in January 2002, as both the writer for Superboy and vice president-editorial. He was promoted to vice president-executive editor in 2004 and, in 2006, oversaw the weekly maxi-series 52. After being hired as co-publisher, DiDio oversaw the massive reboot that was the New 52 in 2011.
Jim Lee had become co-publisher via a different route: he had started off as an artist at Marvel before becoming one of the founders of Image Comics, where he had his own studio, Wild Storm. However, feeling as if he didn't have enough time to focus on his art, in 1998, he sold WildStorm to DC Comics. In 2010, however, he was appointed as co-publisher of DC Comics, although he insisted that this did not mean a move away from the creative side. (Ironically, as he became co-publisher, DC Comics announced they would end the WildStorm imprint.) Lee and writer Geoff Johns then became the architect of the New 52 reboot, with Johns writing and Lee illustrating the flagship Justice League title.
Bob Harras had started his career as an assistant editor at Marvel, before moving up to become the chief editor of the X-Men comics in the '90s (while also writing The Avengers for five years). Due to his success with the X-Men line, Harras was appointed as Marvel's Editor-in-Chief in 1995...just in time for the market to collapse and for Marvel to fall into bankruptcy. Despite those conditions, Harras kept the company afloat, although he was not well-liked. He left Marvel in 2000 and was hired as a contributing editor at WildStorm in 2001. Moving from there to group editor at DC, he was then named in 2010 as DC's new Editor-in-Chief and Vice President. (He was only the second "official" Editor-in-Chief after Jenette Kahn.)
Both DiDio and Harras had micromanaging styles, which often clashed with the creators they hired. Their tenure as co-publisher and Editor-in-Chief often saw creators leaving DC, such as longtime Flash-writer Mark Waid and longtime Batman-writer Greg Rucka, due to their micromanagement. And while the New 52 reboot saw a good amount of success immediately out of the gate, it later dropped off in sales. Over the ten years of their tenure, DiDio and Harras would attempt to "fix" what was wrong with DC, achieve some momentary success, and then have everything revert back to how it was.
Their successes, such as Geoff Johns' Green Lantern saga or Batman (Grant Morrison), were often overshadowed by their failures and their individual ticks, such as DiDio's hatred of Wally West and Dick Grayson. DiDio was disliked by so many people, in fact, that there was a persistent rumor that he was always on the edge of being fired.
And then 2020 rolled around and it wasn't a rumor anymore. In February 21, 2020, it was announced that Dan DiDio would no longer be the co-publisher of DC Comics, with some saying he left, while others saying he had been fired. Reports had come out that he had been championing his "Generation Five" reboot plan for DC, which was wildly unpopular with pretty much everyone in the company, so this might have been the last straw. DC Comics was "restructured" (i.e. a lot of people were fired) in what was termed the "DC Bloodbath" and Bob Harras, too, was fired as part of a massive series of layoffs that saw significant reductions in force across all of WarnerMedia due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, and DC Comics was completely changed.
The only one left standing was Jim Lee, who became the sole publisher and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics. (Diane Nelson, meanwhile, had retired as president in 2018.) In August 2020, Michele R. Wells and Marie Javins were appointed as temporary co-Editors-in-Chief and then, in November, Marie Javins was appointed the new, official Editor-in-Chief in DC Comics.
Marie Javins (2020-present)
Marie Javins is an editor, colorist, and travel writer best known for her long association with Marvel Comics. She was hired as editorial assistant and secretary for Mark Gruenwald before becoming a full editor and editing such projects as the English translation of AKIRA, Groo the Wanderer, and Earth X. She has also colored more than 2,000 pages.
In November 2020, she was named DC's newest Editor-in-Chief. This was met with general praise, as she is incredibly well-liked among the comics community. As E-I-C, she has overseen the ending of Dark Nights: Death Metal and the current relaunch, Infinite Frontier.
