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Is Harry Potter's Barbara Marcus The New Publisher Of DC Comics?

It's been a long time coming since Bleeding Cool first reported the arrival of Diane Nelson at DC Comics, made President of the newly formed DC Entertainment – and the subsequent resignation of Paul Levitz from both President and Publisher roles at DC Comics.

But who to be the new DC Comics Publisher? People have been expecting DC Comics to announce a new appointment  for months now. DC Comics have big plans ahead (I hope to report more on them later today) and they need a permanent captain at the helm to steer the rudder. The anticipation is killing some. There have certainly been many favourites. We ran a few suggestions here, Newsarama ran a few suggestions there.

Well, as of today I'm hearing about a new favourite. And her name is Barbara Marcus.

Currently consulting for Penguin, Marcus was the President of Scholastic Children's Book Publishing and Distribution and executive vice-president of Scholastic, Inc.  She's named as the principal figure in increasing Scholastic Children's Books sales and profile in the first half of the noughties, making them the largest publisher and distributor of children's books in the world.

She worked extensively on the first five Harry Potter books, is largely credited for breaking them in the USA. She also launched the licensing partnership between Scholastic and Warner Bros that brought the world the Harry Potter movies. And by the time she left Scholastic, she was considered the top children's publisher in the USA. Since then she's taken a bit of a career break but has worked on a number of projects.

But it was her success with Warner and Harry Potter that established a firm friendly relationship with the newly-appointed President of DC Entertainment, Diane Nelson. And, in conversations I've had this morning, Warner are talking her up, big time, as the clear favourite for the role. Whether she has accepted such a position, however, I don't know.

Yet.

See, it looks like comics were for girls all along.

DC Comics press representatives declined to comment on this story.

UPDATE: While a few comics people get in touch to confirm they'd heard exactly the same thing, and only hadn't told me because they thought it would be to easily traced back to them, Nikki Finke scotches the possibility completely. This is of coure the same Nikki who stated that Dan DiDio was being fired back in 2008, and that Paul Levitz was not resigning when DC Entertainement was formed – but she is good, very good, and I'd be a fool to dismiss her. Let's see where this goes…

And the game is afoot!

In other, completely unrelated news, Paterson Joseph talks about how rumours of his being picked as the lead for Doctor Who back in 2005 were based in truth...

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