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.

 

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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.

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