BREAKING: Former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras named new Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics

Late today DC Comics co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan Didio announced that the long search for a new Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics had finally come to an end. Bob Harris, former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics (1995-2000) is the new Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics. It's the first Editor-in-Chief that DC Comics has had since the legendary Jenette Kahn held the position from 1981-2002. Harris will oversee DC Comics, DC Universe, Vertigo, and MAD Magazine. He will report directly to Lee and Didio.

Prior to being named Editor-in-Chief, Bob Harras was the Group Editor of Collected Editions at DC Comics.

Who knew that Bob Harris had already been working at DC Comics?

Comments

  1. Harras is a good group editor, or at least, was, when I worked with him briefly at Marvel in the 1990s. He’d been out of The Big Chair too long. Just don’t ask him to write any Avengers comics.

  2. that much I did know, including his creation of the character BREACH, and short run on JLA before Brad Meltzer.

     I do remember him being in charge of Collected Editions too…

    But his X-men editorialship, and other small things that happened during his EIC run at Marvel, were exactly when I wasn’t paying any attention to comics at all.  

  3. Is it a good or bad thing that he was EiC during Marvel’s fall into bankruptcy?  What does a Group Editor of Collections do?  Does he decide what gets collected and when?  Is he in part responsible for DC’s poor trade policy or is that someone else?  I can agree that he made a good group editor in the early 90’s (and even late 80’s too I think) at Marvel, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens next.

  4. Best of luck bob. Focus on quality over quantity. If you have to cut back books do so, but put those energies into something worthwhile and character driven instead. Don’t rush for Market share but build up a world where each story matters And resonates. Learn from marvel about good art, do less, better and it will be more profitable.

  5. This seems to be a rather odd desicion…

  6. That is pretty bizarre.

  7. I just associate him with the awful storylines of the 90s. How much of that he was responsible for or just riding market forces I can’t say.

  8. if you’re going to promote up from within, why wouldn’t you promote someone currently working in a story creating capacity?  this doesn’t seem like it will last long.  I could be wrong and I’m not a big DC reader, but those are my thoughts on the matter.

  9. He’s associated in vague ways with bad things in the ’90s, so trust fandom to totally bemoan this move. As if any of us really know how much of anything was Bob Harris’s fault, or as if any of us have what it takes to be editor i chief of a major comic company.

    I think a little bit of humility is necessary on this. I don’t like how Harris was responsible for Claremont leaving X-Men in ’91, but you have to admit that he was pretty good at recruiting and developing talent (everyone from Silvestri to Pacheco) and getting kids to read comics (at least, when he was the X-Men group editor from the mid-’80s on). For better or worse, a lot of basic things like "crossovers" were fine-tuned by Harris during his tenure. It’s reasonable to think that he’s probably learned from many of his mistakes by now, but he’s been very successful and he knows the medium quite well.

    One thing for sure is that Harris knew how to recruit and develop talent on anything he was editor of. He brought Warren Ellis to the X-books before Warren Ellis was Warren Ellis. Same with Chris Bachalo, and a ton of other creators. So, maybe this will be good for DC.

  10. Harras had some good moments at marvel but reading interviews about how he handled the Clone Saga makes me think he’s a little too stubborn, or at least he was. But hey, he brought back norman osborn for which i am forever in his debt.

    I seem to remember an artist really disliking Harras, enough to write insults about him on the spines of books in one panel of a comic set in a library

  11. Can they get someone in there who will putout trades more often?

     

  12. Jim Shooter was robbed! 

  13. @ABirdseysView thank you so muc. i knew it

  14. Is he responsible for the terrible trade program at DC? Is this a promotion so they don’t have to fire him?

  15. I don’t see how this is a bizarre decision – OK, he’s been in a less public role for a few years, but he’s very well known in the industry, and has been at DC long enough to know what’s working and what’s not. Good luck to him … let’s at least let Bob Harras have a day of feeling good, and not get on his back until there’s a (perceived) reason to do so.

  16. "He historys’s greatest monster"

  17. I can’t say it was his fault, but I don’t remember his years at Marvel being my favorite time in comics. We’ll see what happens.

  18. So the guys who was in charge of Marvel when i ditched out on comics the first time is now going to be in charge of DC Comics at a time where im dangerously close to dropping all my superhero comics? Great choice DC!

  19. Hopefully he wasn’t the one who has watched over the at times horrendous TPB release decisions at DC…

  20. I am flummoxed.

    -J. 

  21. I thought it was bizarre as in out of nowhere, not necissarily bad. I mean he was the person in charge of Heroes Return and 80s X-Men so there’s that. Guy made some bad decisions in his Marvel days but he made some good ones too and blaming the whole bankruptcy thing on him is sort of absurd.

  22. Many people that worked at Marvel in the late 90s don’t talk too highly of Harras.  I’ve heard that he was imposing big creative changes to what the writers wanted to do in their series.  Listen for example to one of the latest Loeb reports (Word Balloon) about this issue.

  23. They shoulda snatched Mark Waid away from Boom. I am not to sure about this choice.

  24. I have no clue what this means and I look forward to John Siuntres telling me what it does mean.

  25. Leather jackets and costumes for everyone!

  26. @Truthseeker he seems happy where he’s at right now, but in spirit, I’m totally with you.  I look forward to the day that Mark Waid ends up EIC of one of the big two.

  27. @Truthseeker

    Speaking of Mark Waid, I doubt will see him at DC anytime soon…

    "Bob did as much to help destroy the comic book industry during the 1990s than any other single human being alive."

    http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=13469

  28. Wow i never realized they went that long without an Editor in Chief…which leads me to question how important is that job (To DC) if its been vacant for almost 9 years? 

    @colmichaelrossi–you should hear what he says about Marvel and DC when he’s not on the record!

  29. I’d love to see Waid as EIC at DC…. Since DC seems to like splitting roles (ie publishers) why not make the 52 team (Waid, Morrison, Johns, and Rucka) co-editors in chief! 🙂

  30. that interview is awesome, i love controversy. 

  31. …and with another shot at corporate entertainment…MAKE SURE NOTHING CHANGES. 

    Make the old people the new people…things makes it very difficult to be vibrant and cutting edge.

    I wish that to such simple concepts as- to be fresh you need to have your finger on the pulse not controlled by the old boys network…you need people who are/know/understand the readership not the dinosaurs from 2 decades ago.  I am certain Bob reads Fables and Green Lantern Corps or Ork Stain so everything is good because he has a passion for sequential storytelling…   

  32. JohnnyNormal- Do you really think that titles like Ork Stain or Fables should or even Could be Main DC titles?

     The man cearly has a passion for comics- and knows what it’s like to head up and oversee multiple depts

    that is what the Editor in Chief does.

     

    Dc will still continue to take risjks with titles like you listed- if you want to see more of them- it’s simple

    Buy them and make sure your firends buy them.

  33. **Buys stock in foil embossing company**

     

    Wood’s right up on said foil embossing company coming shortly. 

  34. What in business is known as "networking" goes a long way. my friends.  Bob Harras is a big friend of Jim Lee, he has helped Lee immensely at the beginning of his career and now he gets a big "gift" back.

    Harras always sided with Jim Lee and against Claremont creatively, resulting in Claremont leaving X-Men 1992 and Lee writing the plots for the best-selling comic in the industry (at the time) with zero experience as a writer.

    Harras then in 1996 called back Lee and the other Image people to Marvel for "Heroes Reborn".  At the time when Image was starting struggling in sales, Harras paid them a lot of money and gave them creative control of the major Marvel properties.

  35. Here’s a long backgrounder on the Bob Harras vs Chris Claremont thing odino1 is referencing.

    http://stason.org/TULARC/art/comics-xbooks/65-Why-did-Chris-Claremont-leave-the-X-titles-Why-did-Peter.html

    That said (or pasted) I don’t think the EIC is the same role at DC as it is at Marvel. I doubt this will have any major noticable impact at DC. Call me optimistic, but fresh bood might be good.

  36. I thought he was great in "Enemy at the Gates"

    😉

  37. If Harris was in fact responsible for the X-Men of the 90’s, then he gets my vote for whatever he wants to do at DC. That was the only era of X-Men I ever loved. I’ve been trying to recapture it since I got back into comics 3 years ago, but the X-Men of recent years just don’t measure up to Onslaught, Zero Tolerance, Fatal Attraction…

    Also, Mark Waid seems kinda douchey in that interview.