I first started hearing whispers that CBR founder Jonah Weiland would be joining DC in a senior management position a few months ago, and whaddaya know, he has confirmed his new job as VP of Marketing & Creative Services with a tweet! And some loafing around.

According to Newsarama, in his position Weiland will head the Trade Marketing, Consumer Marketing, and Design/Creative Services teams, and he’ll share running the publicity department with current head Courtney Simmons. As VP he’ll report to Hank Kanalz, the Senior VP of Publishing Strategy and head of Publishing Support Strategy, one of the three departments established in January’s reorg. With Nancy Spears as VP of Sales, this duo more or less replaces John Cunningham who was downsized in that reorganization.

I can’t say that this news hasn’t been greeted with shock by those who first heard it – but not in a negative way. Weiland founded and ran Comic Book Resources for 21 years – practically inventing online comics news in the process –  before selling it to Valnet three years ago.  It seemed to be a very lucrative deal – at least based on the peaceful Farmer Thanos life that Weiland embarked on according to his FB postings.

It was during this hiatus that the love and mastery of baking displayed above was nurtured.

So why would anyone as intelligent and capable as Jonah decide to give up baking to jump into the churning reorganization that is DC Comics?

I guess he needed some adventure in his life?

At any rate, while he was at CBR, I considered Jonah a valued and trusted colleague, someone who I could always turn to for solid advice and insight into the crazy comics journalism business. I’m sure he’ll bring that same level headed business sense to the very real challenges of of marketing comics in these tumultuous times. He’ll also reunite with many a face from his CBR days, including former top editors Andy Khouri (now an editor at DC) and, a more recent DC recruit, Albert Ching. So yeah, the gang’s all there. Maybe there’s a yacht in the future.

Of course, Jonah’s knowledge of how the media works should give him a strong hand in dealing with publicity. If I can give him a word of advice: Bacon. Everyone missed that crazy maple bacon from the SDCC DC press breakfasts. Bacon will heal everything.

In all seriousness, we here at The Beat send our heartiest best wishes to Jonah on his new position.

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