Lawrence D. Lieber (; born October 26, 1931) is an American comic book writer and artist best known as co-creator of the Marvel Comics superheroes Iron Man, Thor, and Ant-Man. He is also known for his long stint both writing and drawing the Marvel Western Rawhide Kid and for illustrating the newspaper comic strip The Amazing Spider-Man from 1986 to 2018. From 1974 to 1975, he was editor of Atlas/Seaboard Comics. Lieber is the younger brother of Stan Lee, who had been a writer, editor, and publisher of Marvel Comics.
Early life
Larry Lieber was born in Manhattan, New York City, the second child of Romanian-Jewish immigrant parents Celia (née Solomon) (1894–1947) and Jack Lieber (1886–1968), and the brother of Stanley Martin Lieber, later known as Marvel Comics editor and impresario Stan Lee. When he was six months old, the family moved to The Bronx, settling at 1720 University Avenue, which Lee described as a one-bedroom, "third-floor apartment facing out back", with him and Larry sharing a bedroom and his parents using a foldout couch. At "about ten-and-a-half", with his brother in the U.S. Army, Lieber and his parents returned to Manhattan, moving to the Washington Heights neighborhood. Lee elsewhere described that move to a two-story, three-bedroom home at 1084 West Broadway as occurring in 1949, when Larry would have been 17 or 18. As Lieber recalled it to comics historian Daniel Best, "My mother died when I was 16. My brother was back from the Service, he was just married and he moved out outside of New York to Long Island. I lived with him for a while and it didn't work out so well. I wanted to leave, so I left. I was very young and I had a couple of jobs."
At 17, Lieber became a messenger for The New York Times and also found work at the Times Square studio of Sam Furber, a letterer whose work included movie posters. For roughly a year and a half, he lived in the since-defunct Hotel Manhattan Towers, a residence hotel at Broadway and West 76th Street in Manhattan.
Career
Early work
In 1941, Lee was made the editor of Timely Comics, the future Marvel Comics, then a division of a publishing company owned by a relative, Martin Goodman. There Lieber began illustrating comic books; his first known credit is penciling and inking the four-page crime comics story "Cop on the Beat", by an unknown writer, in All True Crime #44 (cover-dated May 1951).
In 1951, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, beginning four years of military service. He again drew for his brother, editor Stan Lee, at the 1950s forerunner of Marvel Comics, known generally as Atlas Comics, though whether on staff or freelance is uncertain. Regardless, his next confirmed credit is penciling and inking the three-page story "A World to Conquer" in Journey into Unknown Worlds #52 (Dec. 1956), followed by stories in such Atlas romance comics as Love Romances, Love Tales, Stories of Romance, True Tales of Love and The Romances of Nurse Helen Grant in issues cover-dated April to August 1957 and July 1958. In 1958, following an economic downturn for the publisher and the firing of virtually all the comics staffers save Lee, "Stan said he wanted somebody to help him write, and he had nobody then; he was doing it all himself. I said, 'I'm not really a writer.' He said, 'Oh, I've read your letters.'"
Marvel superheroes and the Rawhide Kid
Under Stan Lee plots, Lieber would go on to script the debut origin stories and other early appearances of the superheroes Thor (co-created with artist Jack Kirby) in Journey into Mystery, Iron Man (co-created with Kirby and Don Heck) in Tales of Suspense, and Ant-Man (co-created with Kirby) in Tales to Astonish.
As Stan Lee recalled, in his trademark jocular style, in 1974,
Lieber in 1999 remembered circumstances less hyperbolically: "Thor was just another story. I didn't think about it at all. Stan said, 'I'm trying to make up a character,' and he gave me the plot, and he said, 'Why don't you write the story?'" Under Lee's plotting, Lieber's eight Thor stories also introduced the Marvel characters Loki, Odin, and Balder, from the pantheon of Norse mythological gods; their home, Asgard; and Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge, which connected that realm to Earth.
After the debut Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963), however, Lee replaced Lieber with Robert Bernstein, writing as "R. Berns", for the next seven issues before Lee took over the reins himself for a few stories. Don Rico, writing as "N. Korok", followed for a two-issue stint. Lee then took over as regular writer for the next few years. Lieber wrote the first nine Ant-Man stories (following the character's non-costumed introduction months earlier) in Tales to Astonish #35-43 (Sept. 1962 - May 1963) before veteran Ernie Hart did five issues, followed by Lee taking over. As Lieber explained, Lee