Paul Jenkins, writer of Spider-Man, Hulk, Inhumans, Sentry, and Witchblade has taken a position at Top Cow as lead story editor. His primary responsibility will be working with all the Top Cow writers in an editorial capacity to ensure a uniform strategic direction in storylines. Jenkins sees his task as creating a more cohesive Top Cow Universe, but in addition to editing and coordinating, Jenkins will also add additional writing and plotting of Top Cow titles to his duties.
Top Cow, which represents a significant portion of the Image publishing block, is increasingly in need of coordination. Bestselling Top Cow titles include: Witchblade, Tomb Raider, No Honor, Fathom, and J. Michael Straczynki's Midnight Nation. A television series based on Witchblade will be a mainstay of the TNT network's schedule for 2001-2002. While the founding of Image Comics was in part a reaction to the editorial straightjackets imposed by Marvel and DC, it is now apparent that Image studios could benefit from the coordination imposed by a central editorial control. Top Cow's appointment of Jenkins is indicative of an attempt to exercise more centralized control while avoiding the often arbitrary hierarchical editorial structures that publishers like Marvel and DC inherited from their pulp and magazine publishing predecessors.
