As we wrote yesterday, Marie Javins made history by being name Editor in Chief at DC Comics. We also wrote that we expected this to be a very popular move in the industry, and indeed, Twitter went wild with joy, with praise from her old Marvel co-workers like Joe Quesada and CB Cebulski, and current and past DC staffers, including Stuart Moore, Andy Khouri and Andrea Shea.

I first met Marie back in….the day, aka the ’90s. She was working at Marvel and as I recall was working on things like the Epic line, Hellstrom, Akira, Earth X and much more. When she started out, she had a parallel career as a colorist, which could only help develop a sense of the intricacies of comics art and storytelling — pretty irreplaceable training. Marie’s run at Marvel was well respected and brought a ton of new talents into comics. Eventually she ditched it to travel around the world twice, and ended up as an editor for Teshkeel Comics, a line set in and marketed to the Middle East and best known for The 99, which I think was turned into a cartoon eventually?

Anyway, Marie was dragged back to the mainstream of comics back in 2015 to oversee Convergence, the-two month event that filled in while DC was moving to the West Coast. The joke at that time was that Marie had been hired to literally turn the lights out at DC’s New York office, but she was so highly thought of (especially by then co-publisher Dan DiDio) they managed to get her to take on a job on the West Coast.

In addition to all her other accomplishments, most recently Marie got her old coworker Christian Cooper back into comics, a big news-making move, but also just the right thing for this moment.  She also had a huge hand in developing many of DC’s books for younger readers, including the acclaimed Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass. Many of Marie’s projects are usually mentioned with the word “acclaimed” in front of them – it is truly the mark of a good editor.

When people ask me what it takes to be a good comic book editor, I say that the job is about 20% story editor, 30% project manager and 50% psychologist. No one who isn’t an editor believes me at first…but eventually they do. You need to have an eye for talent, also an eye for what talent is suited for, and also juggle all the struggles and anxieties that freelance creators are subject to while inspiring them to do their best work. It’s harder than it looks.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that Marie is great at ALL of that. And that’s why people are so happy she’s ascended to a position at the top of one of the “Big Two.” Comics may be a much bigger world than the Big Two in 2020, but it’s still a big deal.

And with that a sampling of the tweets reacting to Javins being named EIC.

https://twitter.com/JimLee/status/1325890134605099011

https://twitter.com/axelalonsomarv/status/1325890124471803905

And reader, you may be asking yourself “but what about the Kremlinology, Heidi? What is happening at DC!”

And indeed there is Kremlinology! A lot. But for the moment, let us simply enjoy the moment of one of the good people getting rewarded for all their hard work.