How would you rate DC's various Head Honchos?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Since none of us are probably old enough to remember, it'd probably be best to start with Carmine Infantino, who was responsible for bringing Jack Kirby over from Marvel, and putting Julie Shwartz in charge of the Superman & Batman titles after the success he'd had with The Flash, Green Lantern, and Justice League.

If I recall correctly, Infantino was followed by Dick Giardano, who not only brought Frank Miller and John Byrne over from Marvel to revamp Batman & Superman, but also helped Karen Berger start recruiting British comic creators like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison.

Next up was Mike Carlin, who got the job after the phenomenal success of his Superman titles that culminated in the Death of Superman event. He was largely responsible for the DC legacy era of young new characters who took up the mantles of older heroes.

And, finally, we have Dan Didio, who is responsible for as many homeruns as he has been for spectacular failures thanks to his enthusiastic but chaotic management style.

Of course, none of these guys can get all the credit, nor all the blame for their respective tenures as head of DC's editorial. Infantino had to deal with higher ups at National like publisher Jack Liebowitz, Giordano worked closely with publisher Jannette Khan, who also had to answer to the corporate whims of Warner Bros. Carlin also had Paul Levitz, as did Didio, who then answered to Diane Nelson. With Nelson on a leave of absence, I have no idea who Didio and Jim Lee report to now.

Among these guys, who do you think was the most successful given the market they were dealing with? Obviously sales were much higher in the past, but the situation now is also much different with so many different kinds of media competing for attention, so specific sales numbers aren't really indicative of each editor's relative success. I'm thinking more in terms of who produced the best work and helped push the industry forward in the best, most creative ways. Who was the most creative? Who treated their creators the best? Who started policies that made the biggest difference?

[Raijin]

Wow. I think this post is going to start a lot of sh*# due to everyone hating on Didio as if their life depends on it. The question is a complicated one though. A lot of these head honchos contributed to things that are still relevant today. Whether it was good or bad. I think they are all 50/50, in my opinion. None of them are perfect but at the same none of them are awful either.

[Lee Stone]

I'll be nice and say only the nice things, since there's a lot of bad I could say about the current regime.

Of the bigger bigwigs, I'd have to say that I liked Jenette Khan, who was actually president over Dick Giordano and Paul Levitz in the '80s, the most. The three of them were also responsible for one of DC's best editors ever, Karen Berger, to come about.
I think Giordano gets most of the recognition for this period because he was handling the 'Meanwhile...' column.

[Jim Kelly]

First, you have to make a list of all the publishers, presidents, editors-in-chief, editorial directors and various positions through the years from 1935 to 2018.

Then we can discuss.

Carmine Infantino started out as the editorial director and rose to publisher, because as he said nobody else wanted the job. He was wearing several hats and they pretty much needed four people to do his job after he left. He was the Jim Lee, Dan Didio, Geoff Johns and Bob Harris of National Periodical Publications. But there was also Sol Harrison, who stayed on after Carmine and I think he was president.

[The Darknight Detective]

Guys, watch what you post here. It would be far easier to shut down this thread or ban a poster than canceling Roseanne was.

[The Darknight Detective]

I guess whoever was in charge of DC during the Silver Age (Irwin Donenfeld?) probably deserves to be #1 on the list, since that's when the company was at its peak.

Carmine Infantino was the first person in charge of DC that I can recall. I can remember seeing him for the first time on Wonderama circa 1974 discussing what DC was up to at the time and comics in general (he even did a little fast artwork, too). In retrospect, that TV appearance was a very important moment for me in regards to increasing my appreciation for our hobby. As Jim stated, it's hard to rate him because he was wearing so many hats back then, but I look back at his tenure, possibly due to nostalgia of my childhood, more fondly than the others.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

First, you have to make a list of all the publishers, presidents, editors-in-chief, editorial directors and various positions through the years from 1935 to 2018.

Then we can discuss.

If you have that list handy, you can post it here.

Otherwise, I think we can still discuss the highs and lows of Infantino, Giardano, Carlin and Didio without too much difficulty.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I guess whoever was in charge of DC during the Silver Age (Irwin Donenfeld?) probably deserves to be #1 on the list, since that's when the company was at its peak.

Yes, Donenfeld was in charge of editorial in the sixties before Infantino took over from him when Marvel started destroying DC in sales for the first time. While I will certainly give him credit for telling Shwartz to give superheroes a try again, I think he benefited from having virtually no competition and once competition reared its head in the form of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Donenfeld was utterly ill-equipped to handle it and had no clue what it was that made Marvel special.

[Trey Strain]

Comics fans don't have enough information to make judgments like that. The only objective thing you can do is to look at the sales. People who like to criticize DiDio and Lee need to notice that DC has made some significant gains on Marvel in recent years. And this is that first time that's happened since the anomaly of Marvel's bankruptcy.

[The Darknight Detective]

Yes, Donenfeld was in charge of editorial in the sixties before Infantino took over from him when Marvel started destroying DC in sales for the first time. While I will certainly give him credit for telling Shwartz to give superheroes a try again, I think he benefited from having virtually no competition and once competition reared its head in the form of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Donenfeld was utterly ill-equipped to handle it and had no clue what it was that made Marvel special.

Ah, but would Marvel have even existed had DC decided not to return to superheroes?

[caj]

Of the bigger bigwigs, I'd have to say that I liked Jenette Khan, who was actually president over Dick Giordano and Paul Levitz in the '80s, the most. The three of them were also responsible for one of DC's best editors ever, Karen Berger, to come about.

I'll go along with this.

[Restingvoice]

I don't know enough about any of them or how much pull they have, so I'm just gonna list my positive and negative experience and people who know more than me can apply that to each people responsible

Here goes

Whoever decided that DC should be set in a shared universe but didn't manage to keep all the books or characters consistent gets a downvote.

Whoever decided to keep pushing certain characters despite not having enough sale and deliberately sideline characters who have enough fans to make sales gets a downvote

Related to that, Whoever decided to hold on character development and deliberately not taking advantage of the character's popularity because they're afraid they will overshadow their preferred character gets a downvote

Whoever decided that characters should have continuity and character development while at the same time forcing them to remain the same gets a downvote.

Whoever allows writers to go off on their own and not informing other writers even though they're supposed to be working in the same universe, worse, if they kill off a character or change status quo without informing the writer who's currently writing that character, they get a downvote.

I don't... have an upvote list... right now... because as far as I know those go to the writers... because from my experience, the stories individually are good, it's just when you see the universe as a whole that they begin to break, and I don't know who to blame for that.

Oh wait. Whoever got the idea to make Elseworld line, that person gets an upvote

[Jim Kelly]

Harry Donenfeld, along with Jack Liebowitz, was the big cheese who took over National Allied from Major Malcolm and formed Detective Comics, Inc., in 1937.

But Harry suffered a head injury in 1962 that left him in a shattered state and he lived out his last few years in a care home.

Vin Sullivan was the leading editor when Harry and Jack came in. He didn’t like them and left but not before giving us the great early days of Superman and Batman. Whitney Ellsworth returned from a tragic romance in Hollywood to become essentially editor in chief.

(Not mentioning All-American for now.)

It was under Whit that DC carved out a wholesome image for its line. And he gave orders out to all the other DC editors. Eventually with Ellsworth heading back to Hollywood to supervise SUPERMAN productions and pursue other projects. According to Dr. Bails, Whit co-wrote THE GODFATHER.

Irwin was Harry’s son and served as editoral director and then vice president in the 1950s. In 1967, Kinney bought National Periodical Publications. And that was the end for Irwin.

There’s a comic book legend that Martin Goodman was playing a round of golf with the DC publisher who bragged that they were killing it with their Justice League comic. And so Martin ordered Stan to create a super-hero team. So the Fantastic Four was born.

There might be an element of truth in this legend, but who would be the DC publisher? Harry? Not likely. Liebowitz? Irwin?

[SJNeal]

Comics fans don't have enough information to make judgments like that. The only objective thing you can do is to look at the sales. People who like to criticize DiDio and Lee need to notice that DC has made some significant gains on Marvel in recent years. And this is that first time that's happened since the anomaly of Marvel's bankruptcy.

I don't need sales figures to tell me that the quality of creative output between the Khan/Giordano and Levitz/Carlin eras far exceeded anything we've seen in the past 10-15 years.

[Slim Shady]

Whoever ran things in the silver age did a good job.

Whoever ran things in the 80s did a good job. Especially when you consider how Crisis was handled. I know we like to argue about pre this and post that, and nitpick what was better, but it was successful. That was a big gamble to essentially end the universe and start over, and for the most part they pulled it off. That wasn't an easy task, just take a look at the new52 and how it was received.

Whoever ran things for most of the 90s did good.

I'd say whoever ran things from around 2000 until now is behind everyone else. Although I must say they seem to be going more uphill than downhill recently so they're turning it around.