Larry Lieber

Lawrence D. "Larry" Lieber (born October 26, 1931)^[1] is an American comic book artist and writer, and the younger brother of Marvel Comics' writer, editor and publisher Stan Lee.^[2]

Lieber is best known for scripting the first appearances of the Marvel characters Iron Man and Thor; for his long stint both writing and drawing the Marvel Western Rawhide Kid; and for illustrating the newspaper comic strip The Amazing Spider-Man for many years. In the mid-1970s, he became editor of rival Atlas/Seaboard Comics, which spurred revolutionary changes in comics-creator rights during its brief existence.^[3]

Biography

Early life

Born in New York City, New York, the second child of Romanian Jewish immigrant parents, Larry Lieber attended art school at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and at Manhattan's Art Students League. He then did military service with the U.S. Air Force for four years.^[2]

Career

In the early 1960s, Lieber scripted several Marvel Comics stories plotted by his brother, company editor-in-chief Stan Lee. Lieber's scripting credits include early appearances of superheroes including Thor in Journey into Mystery, Iron Man in Tales of Suspense, and Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish.

From 1964–1973 (after which it became a reprint title), Lieber was the writer/artist of the Marvel Western title Rawhide Kid.^[3] Lieber said in 1999,

I don't remember why I wanted to do it, particularly. I think I wanted a little more freedom. I didn't do enough of the superheroes to know whether I'd like them. What I didn't prefer was the style that was developing. It didn't appeal to me. ... Maybe there was just too much humor in it, or too much something. ... I remember, at the time, I wanted to make everything serious. I didn't want to give a light tone to it. When I did Rawhide Kid, I wanted people to cry as if they were watching High Noon or something. ... I'm a little unclear about leaving the superheroes and going to Rawhide Kid. I know that at the time I wanted — what's the expression? — a little space for myself or something, and I wanted to do a little drawing again.^[3]

In 1974, Lieber left Marvel to take on an editorship at Atlas/Seaboard Comics, the term that comic book historians and collectors use to refer to the "Atlas Comics" line published by Seaboard Periodicals, to differentiate it from the 1950s Marvel Comics predecessor Atlas Comics. Marvel Comics founder and longtime publisher Martin Goodman had left Marvel in 1972, having sold the company in 1970, and launched this new company in June 1974 to go head-to-head with Marvel and DC Comics. He hired Lieber to be editor of the Atlas black-and-white comics-magazines, and additionally hired Warren Publishing veteran Jeff Rovin to edit the color comic-book line, which soon fell under Lieber's editorship.^[3]

As Lieber, in a 1999 interview, described his experience as editor:

When I went there, Martin put out two kinds of books. He was putting out color comics, and he was also going to put out black-and-white comics like Warren and Marvel. Now, I knew nothing about black-and-white comics, right? My only experience was in the color comics. Jeff Rovin came from Warren, and he knew nothing about color comics. Martin unfortunately put Jeff in charge of all the color comics and put me in charge of the black-and-white books. It was an unfortunate thing, and basically what happened was that Jeff's books didn't turn out so well... Martin had to pay high freelance rates, because otherwise nobody would work for a new and unproven company... It didn't work out too well, and Jeff finally left angrily or something, and I had to take over all his books. At this point, business was bad, and I tried to do what I could. One of the things I had to do was to cut rates and tell people they were going to make less money, which was not an enviable position.^[3]

References

Notes

Sources consulted

• Larry Lieber at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
• Larry Lieber at the Grand Comics Database
• Rawhide Kid, The (Marvel, 1960 Series) at the Grand Comics Database. "The" as per copyrighted title in postal indicia, no "The" on cover-logo trademark.
• Larry Lieber at the Comic Book DB