Jenette Kahn
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| Jenette Kahn | |
 Portrait of Jenette Kahn by Neal Adams |
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| Born | |
| Nationality |
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| Area(s) | Editor |
| Awards | Library of Congress Living Legends
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Jenette Kahn is an American comic book editor and executive. She joined DC Comics in 1976 as publisher, and five years later was promoted to President and Editor-in-chief. After 26 years with the oldest comics company in the United States, she stepped down in 2002 to pursue other endeavors, including promoting her book In Your Space: Personalizing Your Home and Office (ISBN 0-7892-0755-9), published by Abbeville in 2002.
Kahn grew up in Pennsylvania with her parents (her father was a Rabbi) and brother Si. After graduating from Harvard with honors in art history, she went on to found Kids, Dynamite! and Smash magazines. Though she was just 25 years old when she founded Smash, Kahn was savvy enough to convince legendary designer Milton Glaser to become the magazine’s art director.
Kahn was the driving creative force behind the growth of a comic book imprint into the multi-billion dollar home of some of the most recognized iconic characters in the world, including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman (although all of which had been DC properties for at least 35 years prior to her association with the company). Along with editor and executive vice president Paul Levitz and managing editor Dick Giordano, she was responsible for the 1970s and 1980s revitalization of the company's entire line of heroes. Others who played vital roles in the process were writers Marv Wolfman and Alan Moore, artists George Perez and Keith Giffen, and editor Karen Berger. Writing in Silver Bullet, John Wells described some of the innovations introduced by Kahn in the late 1970s:
- When Jenette Kahn took over as DC's publisher in 1976, the average comic book contained only 17 pages of story for 35¢. Nearly half of each issue was filled with advertising and editorial content. Kahn's initial response was 1977's line of Dollar Comics. In terms of content, a Dollar Comic gave readers approximately the story pages of four 35¢ comic books for the price of three. From the retailer perspective, the Dollar Comic represented a greater profit than the standard 35¢ issues. And just to make sure nobody missed them, the books were a quarter-inch taller than other comics and had a distinctive trade dress. The first two conversions to the format -- House of Mystery and Superman Family -- hit the stands shortly before Christmas in 1976 and the other two expanded titles -- G.I. Combat and World's Finest Comics -- debuted in January of 1977. Sales on these -- and several summer specials with the umbrella title of DC Special Series -- paid off well enough to justify an expansion of the line in 1978. The Batman Family joined the fold in January and, at the dawn of the line-expanding DC Explosion in June, Adventure Comics came aboard. One of the perks of the Explosion was the complete elimination of advertising in the Dollar Comics and the addition of wraparound covers. They lost the quarter-inch height advantage, though. The DC Explosion, sadly, became an implosion almost immediately and, within a year, the ads were back, and the page count had shrunk. In 1980, DC made its second attempt at a line expansion and this time it clicked. The Dollar Comics were ad-free again by the end of the year. [1]
[edit] Awards
Kahn received the Library of Congress Living Legends award in the "Writers and Artists" category in April 2000 for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage.
