In the 1960s, Marvel Comics introduced many of their most popular characters and the company was a powerhouse in the superhero market. Wanting to expand into other comic book markets, like ones that would be of interest to girls and young women, they revived their romance magazines. With the new books came the idea of having an advice column in which teens could send in questions to an expert. Stan Lee turned to Marvel’s “Girl Friday” Suzan (Lane) Loeb to be the dispenser of wisdom for that column.

Loeb recently talked with Scoop about her popular advice column “Suzan Says” and her experiences working at Marvel in the publisher’s famous Bullpen.

Scoop: Were you always interested in writing?
Suzan Loeb (SL): Oh my gosh, yes. I was a really good journalist student in high school, and I worked on the school newspaper and the yearbook. I had one teacher who recognized, supposedly, my talent and he suggested that I go to Syracuse University, which was a leader in the field for journalism degrees. But, I took a different route. I went into teaching instead. I always wrote on the side, I wrote a lot of poetry, but it just didn’t happen then.

Scoop: How long did you teach?
SL: I taught on and off during the two major strikes in New York. Probably in the inner city about three years, then when I got married, I taught in Putnam Valley for another three or four years.

Scoop: How did you get involved with Marvel?
SL: When I was in the city and I was threatened for the second time on the picket lines during the second strike, I had called a college roommate to see how she was doing, and she was a Goodman. She was Martin Goodman’s brother’s daughter. Ellen was one of my suitemates in college at Buffalo State. We talked about it and she said, “Why don’t you get out of the teaching business and go see cousin Chip.” I don’t remember the name of the company, but Marvel was a subsidiary and they had been doing romance magazines. I went over and interviewed with cousin Chip, and he said to go across the street and see Sol Brodsky at Marvel Comics. That’s how I got into Marvel Comics. Nepotism ran rampant in the Marvel industry and people were related and interrelated from what I understand. That’s how I got in, it was through somebody knowing the right person.

Scoop: You’ve been described as Marvel’s “Girl Friday,” what did that mean regarding your typical job duties?
SL: I’ll tell you I don’t remember anything but getting to work as soon as I could and laughing the whole day. No computers back then, remember, so everything was done by hand, whether it was answering mail or answering the phone. It’s interesting, because there wasn’t a coffeemaker in the office, and you think, usually that’s what a girl Friday does – she makes coffee, and she runs errands. No, I didn’t do that. The guys in the Bullpen were there, they did their own work, they brought their own coffee, they got their own lunch. That was it. Mostly, it was answering the telephone and the mail.

We had no visitors. People were not coming through the door, as far as fans. The only people who came through the door were other artists picking up their blue boards or dropping them off or picking up pieces to be inked or colored. If you look at the line at the bottom of any of the comics, it lists an address on Madison Avenue. That was not our address; nobody knew where we were. Not a sign on the building, not a sign on the door.

Scoop: You were working in Marvel’s Bullpen, which is famous for the talent in that office. Who were you working with at the time?
SL: It was Tony Mortellaro, who was doing Sgt. Fury, Herb Trimpe, who was doing the Hulk, Marie Severin, who was doing Sub-Mariner, and Johnny Romita, who was doing Spider-Man.

Scoop: That’s a talented group of people.
SL: Right, and those were the four artists who were there every single day.

Scoop: How did the “Suzan Says” column come about?
SL: This is absolutely hysterical; you talk about being in the right place at the right time. With the exception of Marie Severin, I was the only woman in the office. Everybody else was male. If you know Marvel Comics, you know one of the things that stood out was “Stan’s Soapbox.” When they decided to do a resurgence of the romance comics to capitalize on the 13-year-old girl marketplace, because all of the other books – with the exception of Millie the Model – were male-oriented superheroes. It wasn’t the in-thing, really for girls to be into the “boy” comics. The girls were into the Archies and the Little Lulus, etc.

Well, obviously, Stan did not want to do “Stan’s Soapbox” for the girl comics. So, he said, “Okay, we’re going to do something different. I’m going to give you three pages a month in each of the comic books…we’re going to develop a persona… you’re going to be a divorcee with a lot of experience when it comes to dating and marrying.” He thought about that for a minute, and said, “That’s not going to work. You know what? Do whatever you want to do. Figure it out. Give me three pages a month.” [laughs] And that’s how I landed it.

So, I went home with a yellow legal pad and pencil in hand and wrote my pages. The idea came to me, for the very first issue of introducing myself and saying what was going to happen and then the second page had to do with the three stories that were in the magazine. Discussing those stories. The last page was encouraging people to write in so that I could help them solve their romance issues.

Scoop: Were you a fan of romance comics before you started writing the “Suzan Says” column?
SL: No because I did not know that romance comics existed. I grew up on Archie, so any of the other comics there were of no interest. Ellen, my suitemate, used to receive from Marvel a package of the next run comics once a month. They didn’t interest me, I’m sorry if I sound prejudicial, but that’s the society I grew up in. I was not interested in the superheroes and the action comics. I read romance magazines, but not comics.

Scoop: Did you draw inspiration from the magazines?
SL: No, I drew inspiration from real life. Remember I was in my early 20s when I started this. I had a circle of girlfriends who had just graduated college and starting careers with all the different issues and problems and angst. We also discussed what we had gone through as young adults and teenagers.

Scoop: That makes sense, since your advice was for teenagers.
SL: Right. I’ll share this with you because it resonated with me and was very poignant. The fan mail started coming in, I mean we’re talking bags of fan mail. It was a little upsetting and disconcerting to be able to read these letters and see that these young women, and in some cases young men, were reaching out to a comic book person to ask for advice. They had nobody else that they felt comfortable asking.

I took this very personally. I was not comfortable reproducing somebody’s letter with the questions they had for fear of giving a wrong answer or wrong advice. I did read all the letters that came in and then I would sit back and address a commonality or common issue that was the thread through a lot of these letters. It made me comfortable because I felt I was giving general advice for a specific problem without identifying a specific individual. And I’m sure that there was more than one person who read it and said, “Oh, that’s me.” So, what we did was, I devised a letter that was run off a mimeograph machine that said “Thank you so much for sending in your question and your comments. The issue that you raised was so important and so interesting that, although I may not be able to answer you directly, look for that question in a storyline in a future comic book.”

Scoop: Aside from choosing questions that had common issues, were there any more sensitive or specific ones that you answered while trying not to single out the reader?
SL: Yes and no. I was also taking graduate literature classes and it’s interesting because some of the concepts with love and romance are in the classics of literature. Sometimes I would combine something there. In one of the panels that I participated in in this past Heroes Comic Con, somebody asked the question if I had ever gotten a letter and what kind of advice did I give in a situation where a child discussed abuse. I have to tell you, in all the years that I did this, in those days, I never received a letter about abuse. I’m very glad I didn’t because that to me would have been devastating. What do you do with that? You can’t just leave it. It has to be postmarked you report it to somebody.

Scoop: What were your goals for the column?
SL: My goals were to make it interesting and for people to read it and identify with some if not all of the advice and agree or disagree, so that it becomes a conversation. Remember, I studied journalism, I loved the idea of writing. I did go on in the rest of my career always to have a really strong position where I did do a lot of writing, for the rest of my years in business. I just always wanted to make it readable and interesting, and not really controversial. To open the door so that people could have conversations and a platform.

Scoop: Tell me about the logo for “Suzan Says.”
SL: That was so exciting. As the page came together, Stan said, “Go to John [Romita] and he’s going to do your logo.” John looked at me and drew my face and drew the logo. Stan named it “Suzan Says.” He used my real name. The thing that was funny in those days, there was no computer, whatever was done – especially done in ink – could not be erased and I was afraid that I was going to mess up my signature. So, I wrote my signature on a piece of paper and I said, “John, use this,” and he copied my signature.  

Scoop: Did you get to keep the art?
SL: No! I knew you were going to ask me that! [laughs] Everybody asks that. I don’t even know what happened to it. In those days, nothing was a phenomenon, everything was dispensable and disposable. Whoever knew this was going to take off to the extent that it did? It still resonates with people today. Just the idea of keeping…I thought I would be there forever. One of the things I did was when new issues would come in, I would pull the old issues off the shelf and put the new ones in. I was there when Silver Surfer #1 hit the stands! Three months earlier, did I know to take one home? No. And I was allowed to take what I wanted. The only thing I took were my magazines, my comic books.

Scoop: Going back to the Marvel Bullpen, what was the environment and energy like?
SL: [laughs] After Laugh-In the night before, they would laugh about the different sketches. There was always chatter, always talk, and it never interfered with what they had to do. So, it was like getting together with your best friends and spending the day with them. Except, instead of shopping or going out to lunch together, you’re sitting their and drawing, and your chatting about everything and anything. But the best was after Laugh-In and listening to them analyze and talk about it and laugh about it. The laughter, the camaraderie – never interfered with their work. And the other thing that I thought was really terrific was that there were no egos. Everybody was treated equally. They were truly a family and I really feel that they loved each other and respected each other.

Scoop: What do you attribute to the fact that there were no egos in there?
SL: I think the level of respect. It’s not like one over the other like “My work is better than yours” or “I’m getting more play on my comic book than you are.” It was like walking in without having family dynamics, but you could tell immediately that they all liked each other. I guess they had the option of working at home and they chose not to. They liked being in the office, they liked the environment, and they certainly had the clout, in my opinion, to say “I’m not dealing with this, I’ll just telecommute, I’ll just bring my stuff in once a week.” They liked being there as much as I liked being there.

Scoop: Did you draw inspiration from the people you worked with for your column?
SL: I’m not sure. I concentrated more on the letters, and I tried just in general to convey a positive and upbeat attitude. Now, I got that because I drew on the energy that was created within the company…So, if you walk away from an environment that you’re down and it was such a crapola day… I never experienced that. So, in that respect, yes, I did draw from the people that I worked with because it created a safe place, it created a comfortable place. It was fun. And the fun did not interfere with work.

Scoop: What are some of the memories that stand out most from that period?
SL: What stands out most was the parade of artists and inkers and colorists that marched through that door. Every day. So, there was always somebody new coming in and joking. Everybody was pleasant. People were given nicknames in the office. I remember, John Romita’s nickname was “Papa John,” and I don’t know where that derived from. My nickname was “Sagacious Sue.” I got that because everybody who had come in was friendly and smiley and just the positive energy. That was my takeaway. Not only to be in the right place at the right time to get this fabulous assignment, annoyed with myself that I didn’t stay with the company, or wind up with Stan in California when all of that exploded, based on his mind and concepts. Just the whole experience of being touched by these people who are so talented. It was a crazy, crazy world and to see how it evolved, to me it’s still mind blowing how this all evolved.