Larry Lieber - Biography

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

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.

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.

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. Lieber went on to script stories in western titles such as Rawhide Kid.

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.

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

External links

• Larry Lieber at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
• 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.