DC Comics Names Marie Javins and Michele Wells as Interim Editors-in-Chief

DC Comics made headlines last week, when reports of several high-profile layoffs at the company began to be made public. These layoffs, which reportedly included editor-in-chief Bob Harras, several of the publisher’s editors, and other executives, briefly caused concern among the comics community, as they worried what DC’s future would be going forward. Jim Lee, who remains DC’s Chief Creative Officer and Publisher, recently addressed the company’s future in a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter. In the process, the interview confirmed some interesting behind-the-scenes details of DC’s future, including that Marie Javins and Michele Wells will both be replacing Harras as dual editors-in-chief.

“We thought it would be a great pairing to bring them together to help draft and organize the content we’re doing along these lines,” Lee explained. Across digital, across global, we want to make sure we have diversity and inclusivity, and making it in a way that we have authenticity to the storytelling that we’re doing. It’s really about consolidating all of our efforts and having every editors involved in all these directives and also organizing, broadly speaking, in content that is for kids 6 to 11 and then 12 to 45. It’s about consolidating format and oversight to a smaller, more concentrated editorial group.”

Javins previously served as Executive Editor of Global Publishing Initiatives & Digital Strategy, while Wells served as the Executive Editor of DC’s Children’s/Young adult.

This comes after previous rumors had suggested that Javins and Wells would actually be stepping into the roles of Publisher, after Lee was believed to be leaving that title. In the same interview, Lee confirmed that he still is Publisher, and that he will actually have more of a role than he did prior.

“I have more responsibilities and more expectations than ever before. In conversations with (WarnerMedia CEO) Jason Kilar and (Warner Bros. CEO) Ann Sarnoff and my boss, (Warner Bros. global brands and experiences president) Pam Lifford, they have some very ambitious goals for DC and I’m excited to be a part of that. In that respect, there is more on our plate than ever before,” Lee explained. “I will continue to be involved as intimately with publishing as I have from the get-go. Nothing has changed there. And that’s to focus on the creative content, the content strategy how many books we should be publishing, the formats.”

What do you think of Javins and Wells serving as DC’s new editors-in-chief? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!