the writer and artists in his office, though I think they were always working from full scripts. But there was also always an aspect of shyness with him. If he seemed a little shy, it sounds incongruous, but I don’t think it was. I just really liked him a lot. When Hank Chapman left his job as Production Manager, Lee asked Bonnie if she would like the higher paying position. She worked as Production Manager through 1952 until the end of 1953. It was a period when the number of titles at Timely almost doubled. BONNIE: I don’t ever recall feeling pressured. We always seemed to be busy but I don’t think that any of us felt like we were overworked. DAVID: Did you ever feel that there was a hurry-up atmosphere? ARNOLD: Goodman was really good at that. He would get more out of everybody, and it didn’t seem to diminish the quality. DAVID: Now when you took over as Production Manager, Bonnie, what were your duties? To get the comics out, I guess. Were you managerial or hands-on? BONNIE: It was really a managerial job, because there wasn’t much physical stuff for me to do. My job was to get everything together. To get the stuff done. Then I’d take it into Stan, he’d put the stories in the order he wanted them to go to the printer, and we’d be on to the next one. We had somewhere between eight and ten employees, including letterers and proofreaders. Chris Rule, a big, heavy guy, was on staff, mostly in production and inking. He didn’t do a lot of original artwork. Sol Brodsky was an artist, and a very nice guy. Artie Simek was a letterer. Stan Starkman, and Herbie Cooper, a talented singer who sang and acted in amateur productions—they were our letterers. The thing I remember—I took it when I left—was my x-acto knife. Because one of the things we had to be very careful of, was that “flick” remained “flick.” That’s where the x-acto knife came in, just to erase a little bit of the lettering, when necessary. DAVID: Would you say that any of the people working in production were frustrated artists? BONNIE: If so, they weren’t talking about it. I know we had some inhouse artists. Sol Brodsky was an artist, a really nice guy. What Stan would do, there were in-house writers and he would assign the comics to freelance artists. Sol and Chris Rule might have done some of the artwork. I can’t remember whether they just did corrections and additions or whether they actually did some of the stories.
BONNIE: By 1949, when Arnold went over to Magazine Management, we were an item and I, too, began working for Lion Books. I was reading books to be selected for reprints. About a year later Stan asked me to come over to the Timely Comics division and work with him as his assistant. It was really a better job and it paid more. DAVID LAURENCE WILSON: You already knew Stan? BONNIE: We all knew each other. It was a very compatible office. DAVID: When you were Stan’s assistant, did you work in his office? BONNIE: I can’t remember that. Isn’t that funny? I don’t think so.
DAVID: Mostly they were inkers, I think, and they would do inhouse corrections. BONNIE: Yes, that’s mostly what I remember. But I don’t think we did any coloring in-house. I have no memory of that at all. The art came in on the heavy paper that artists use, the big pieces of heavy paper. The lettering was done later in our office. You know what was funny about that place, I used to be very good at getting stores to accept returns, and to do other things, situations that had to be straightened
DAVID: As an editor, Stan seemed to have a fairly lax style, in that he was a collaborator and an encourager, rather than someone who was eager to go line by line over a piece of work. BONNIE: Oh, I think that was absolutely true. He was also very creative, too. That’s the thing I most remember. DAVID: So you would be called in when he needed you for something? BONNIE: I don’t really remember what I did for Stan. There was no correspondence for him. I have no idea what I did in that job. I have no idea! ARNOLD: Part of that was that lax style of Stan’s. BONNIE: Well, and besides, not only was it a long time ago, but there was nothing that happened that was memorable. It wasn’t like other jobs. DAVID: By the 1960s, when Stan would work on a story, and give the writer his input, Stan would talk out the story in his office, and people would describe him as being really boisterous; he’d jump up on his desk and act out a fencing scene. BONNIE: Well, he was. He was very lively, very active. I don’t remember him jumping up on a table, but he’d talk over the stories with 33