WAITING
FOR TOMMY: JASON LIEBIG
By Richard Johnston
Jason Liebig
used to work for Marvel Comics, as an editor. A prominent outspoken
individual, he was known to fans and pros alike. His dismissal
was seen at the time as the new guard marking its territory.
This is the first time he's talked about his experiences at
Marvel.
And yes, he's well aware of his surname.
RICHARD JOHNSTON:
Jason, how did you come to work for Marvel in the first place?
How did you climb the ladder, both into Marvel and then up
their career path?
JASON
LIEBIG: My path to Marvel was not a traditional one. I
graduated from college in 1993 with a degree in business.
In the spring of 1994, I moved to New York City from Nebraska.
I had managed to get interviews at Marvel and DC before moving
to the city, but was still jobless when I arrived.
RICHARD:
I was hired by DC Comics to work as a retailer representative
in May of 1994. This job, like any good first-out-of-college
job, involved a lot of grunt work, but was a valuable learning
experience. My responsibilities at DC also had me attending
almost every convention that DC did, which was great, and
it's how I first met so many people in the business.
In August of 1995,
I left DC Comics.
After leaving
DC, I stumbled upon work as a copywriter in the city, and
ended up doing a fair amount of that for Toy Biz. I wrote
catalog copy for them and over the years I did the copy for
a few hundred toy packages. That kept me within the world
of super-heroes, and all the while, I kept in touch with my
many friends who still worked in the business.
One of those friends
was John Dokes, who was a marketing manager at Marvel at the
time. John and I met while we both attended conventions for
our respective companies. At a social lunch with John sometime
early in 1996, we discussed the comics business, and I had
mentioned that I would have loved to remained in comics, but
only if I could have worked in editorial.
Months later,
in May of 1996, I believe, I received a call from John asking
me if I'd be interested in an editorial position at Marvel.
My immediate answer was yes, and he called me back to give
me a time to show up at the offices.
I didn't
know the details, but I had assumed I'd be meeting with someone
in human resources. When I arrived, I waited and was ushered
into Bob Harras' office. I had never met Bob, but I knew who
he was, and was quite surprised (and genuinely excited) to
be interviewing with him. At the time, there was restructuring
going on, and several Assistant Editor jobs had opened up.
Ben Raab was leaving the X-Men office to work in the fledgling
Marvel online department, and to focus his efforts on writing.
That meant that the Assistant job on the X-Men was open.
Pages:
1 | 2
| 3 | 4
| 5 | 6
| 7 Continued
Here... |
