With a grand total of one exception, the men and women who forged Marvel Comics from 1961 to 1964 have left us. That one exception — the last man standing from those historic four years — is Larry Lieber, who turns 90 today. Jack is gone. Stan is gone. Don, Steve, Dick, Sol, Joe, Stan G., Flo, George, Paul, Bill, Chic, Al, Wally, Artie, Sam, Vince and just a couple others…all gone.
Writer-Artist Larry is still here…one of the few who lived to see characters he worked on become zillion-dollar movies. And perhaps more amazingly, they were movies which had his name in the credits like Thor and Iron Man. I probably won't bother him today but we speak every year or so and a nicer man, we never had in the field.
I first met Larry in the Marvel offices in New York in 1970. He seemed a little surprised that anyone wanted to meet him and he was genuinely pleased when I conveyed to him best wishes from my then-employer Jack Kirby. Jack loved Larry and as far as I could tell, everyone did. A lot of them later felt that he had not received proper recognition for his contribution to comics. I hope we rectified that a little bit in 2003 and again in 2008 when he was brought out to Comic-Con International in San Diego, the latter visit to receive the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.
The award goes to someone whose body of work has not been properly rewarded in terms of credit and/or compensation. That certainly describes Larry. I really liked seeing him signing that first Iron Man story…the early tales of Thor…all those issues of Rawhide Kid…even the pre-superhero Marvel monster comics. And I really like wishing him a happy 90th birthday and hoping he has many more of 'em.