Creator of ’60s superhero fanzine discovers tribute lives on
Issues of Marvel Tribune, dubbed ‘collector’s item,’ found for sale on eBay 50 years after publication
Toronto office worker Ron Liberman just realized he could be “sitting on a gold mine.”
Fifty years after he published the first issue of his 1960s-era superhero fanzine the Marvel Tribune, Liberman googled himself, unearthing on eBay and other websites images of some of the 10 issues he produced between 1967 and ’69.
“I was shocked that something I did 50 years ago is a collector’s item now,” said Liberman, who was the principal writer and editor of the publication.
The first three text-only issues were titled the Monthly Messenger. He then changed the name to the Marvel Tribune. He recently found issue No. 8, which originally sold for 30 cents, on eBay for “more than $330 Canadian.”
The idea that his tribute to Marvel comic-book superheroes and their creators would be for sale now, let alone appreciated almost 109,900 per cent in value, “never entered my mind because it’s a fan magazine . . . not a comic book,” said Liberman, who was in his mid-teens when he launched his first issue.
Liberman, who grew up in Willowdale and attended Newtonbrook Secondary School, was an avid reader of the Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men comics. He wrote letters to the X-Men editor about the comic’s characters and three were published in that many issues, beginning with X-Men No. 28. It was response to those letters from fellow readers that prompted him to create a club for superhero fans — the National Marvel Association (NMA) — and pen his first paper.
“I started out with an old (manual) typewriter and carbon stencils,” Liberman recalled earlier this month at Coffee Public on College St. at Bay St.
His initial offering “was really a newsletter for the neighbourhood kids,” he said. It didn’t become a fullfledged photo-offset printed fanzine until issue No. 4. It grew from two to 20 pages over the two years of its bimonthly run.
“I did the layout — everything except for the artwork and some of the stories,” he said.
As big as the NMA sounded, it “was me,” Liberman said. His positions as publisher and club were included on some of the covers.
The magazine gradually acquired readers via free giveaways, reviews by other fanzines and word-ofmouth. Fan club members paid just 25 cents for the 30-cent zine.
“It only saved you five cents, but in 1968, that was a bigger deal.
“We started to get serious (with issue No. 7),” Liberman recalled. “Memory Lane Books (on Toronto’s Markham St.) was the first comic-book store to sell the Tribune — the first time it was for sale outside of mail order.”
His benevolent uncle printed 600 copies for his hardworking young nephew, “even though I only asked him for 200. I sold up to 200 and gave away the rest at the Toronto Triple Fan Fair in 1968.”
Liberman recruited a number of artists to illustrate his publication and was fortunate to have been able to use a pencil sketch by SpiderMan artist John Romita Sr. in 1969. An NMA member who had received the “previously unpublished” drawing of comic hero Peter Parker and his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson as a gift lent it to Liberman.
“I got my best artist, Ted White, to ink it and I published it on our last back cover — issue No. 10.”
While that final 1969 issue, featuring Cyclops on its front cover, is for sale on eBay for $38.30, online vendor HipComic is currently listing 1968’s issue No. 8, with Black Knight on the cover, for $330.45. “Perhaps they just love that cover picture (by Don Sampson),” Liberman mused.
The Black Knight issue also contains a photo of Stan Lee.
When Liberman met Lee at Toronto’s Triple Fan Fair, he was surprised the Marvel icon recognized both his name and the NMA when Liberman introduced himself.
“(Stan) was my hero at the time, more than any star,” said Liberman, who reported in the Tribune that Lee congratulated him on issue No. 7.
The teenage publisher was among a group of devotees who accompanied Lee to Fan Fair exhibits and a panel discus-
“(Stan) was my hero at the time, more than any star.” RON LIBERMAN EDITOR OF THE MARVEL TRIBUNE
sion at the Poor Alex Theatre.
Liberman was thrilled to include a transcript of a taped Q&A between Comic Canada’s Terry Edwards and Lee in issue No. 9. Liberman figures only about 200 people have read that nine-page interview with Lee, “unless it was reprinted somewhere else.”
Due to the printing costs and the price of mailing issues from Willowdale to Canadian, U.S. and Australian addresses, Liberman never made a profit — “I think I lost money,” he said. But that wasn’t why he only printed 10 issues of the Marvel Tribune.
In late ’69, he traded in superhero fandom for “songwriting, university, hockey and girls.”
Liberman, a prolific albeit unpublished songwriter, has limited copies of all 10 issues of his fan magazine and no immediate plan to sell them.
However, “if the organizers invite me, I might be persuaded to attend and speak at the next Toronto ComiCon (March 16-18, 2018),” he said.