Larry Stark

Larry Stark (born August 4, 1932 in New Brunswick, New Jersey) is an American journalist and reviewer best known for his in-depth coverage of the Boston theater scene at his website, Theater Mirror. In newspapers and online, Stark has written hundreds of reviews of local productions and Broadway tryouts from 1962 to the present. His Boston readers have given him such labels as "head theater angel of Massachusetts" and "Dean of the alternative theater critics."

In 1950 Stark discovered EC Comics (publishers of Tales From The Crypt, Weird Science, and MAD among others) and was soon writing enthusiastic letters of comment and criticism on every issue. Publisher Bill Gaines was so impressed with his critiques that he named him "EC's Official Number One Fan" and bestowed upon him a free subscription to everything EC published, provided that Stark would keep the detailed letters of review coming. EC colorist Marie Severin made a gag sign for Gaines' office that read "God help us to write stories that will please Larry Stark!" Stark’s letters were occasionally excerpted in the E.C. letters columns but EC fans wanted to read them in their entirety, as Gaines did. The first "fanzine" to satisfy that demand was Bhob Stewart and Ted White's POTRZEBIE, in which Stewart wrote that “POTRZEBIE’S main purpose in life is to present the criticism of Stark…sans censorship. You rarely get to peruse his monstrous prose other than a few sentences in the E.C. letter columns. EC values his opinions so much that Gaines has given Larry a free lifetime subscription to all the EC Comics on the condition that he will write EC a letter about each issue telling what he liked and didn’t like about it. Now you’ll know too. Thru POTRZEBIE.” Stark’s column was titled ONE MAN’S OPINION and ran through a change in editorship for POTRZEBIE, later continuing in THE EC FAN JOURNAL. Stark made several visits to the EC offices and his "Elegy" to EC, originally published in HOOHAH #6 (1956), has been reprinted over the years in multiple formats. Most recently it was included in its entirety in "American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1950's" by Bill Schelly (2013).

Between 1950 and 1956, Stark studied English at Rutgers University, leaving New Jersey for Cambridge, Massachusetts in January, 1957. In 1956-57 he co-edited the publication Stellar with Ted White, who recalled:

In the summer and fall of 1957, Stark acted in two Harvard stage productions and then worked backstage at Cambridge theaters for the next five years. In 1962, he began doing theater reviews for MIT's The Tech under the pseudonym Charles Foster Ford. During this period he used a basement mimeograph machine to print the work of local poets with his Larry Stark Press, notable for publishing Peter Guralnick's first book in 1964.

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