At age 93, Larry Lieber is a living link to the golden age of comics. Not quite a decade younger than his more famous brother, Stan Lee (1922-2018), Manhattan native Lieber took drawing lessons at the Art Students League, and by the 1950s was illustrating stories in Journey Into Unknown Worlds, Love Romances, and other titles in what would eventually become the Marvel Comics line. In the early ’60s, Lieber began writing scripts based on his brother’s plots for such artistic giants of the industry as Jack Kirby, and his dialogue emerged from the mouths of a new generation of superheroes, including Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and other denizens of what would evolve into today’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
If you want to have a dialogue of your own (no doubt a quick one) with this legend-maker, you can meet him tomorrow at the 2025 New York Comic Con.
For seekers of the actual, now-yellowing comics that Lieber helped write and draw those many years ago, NYCC will once again feature hundreds of feet of dealers’ tables offering bagged and boarded riches. In past years we’ve seen everything from that ur-saddle-stitched relic Action #1, which features the premiere of Superman, to self-published wares in Artists Alley that still smelled of fresh four-color ink.
Other personal experiences to be had include hunting autographs from such pop culture who’s whos as Alien and Ghostbusters star Sigourney Weaver, The Matrix’s Laurence Fishburne, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, and Brendan Fraser, who has portrayed — at either end of a wide range of big-screen characters — a pragmatic treasure hunter (The Mummy) and a morbidly obese recluse (The Whale).
As always, there will be plenty of digital mirth and mayhem on omnipresent screens, merch for any fancy or fetish, and games to satisfy any skill level.
So pack your cares and woes about our present political, social, and cultural situation into a big shoulder bag and replace those horrors — if only for a long weekend — with some of the cream of 21st-century escapism. ❖
