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CHAPTER 6: FLORENCE STEINBERG
Marvel’s original “gal Friday” was more than a secretary; “Fabulous Flo” Steinberg helped Stan Lee run the publisher when it was just the two of them, became a founding member of the famed Marvel Bullpen, and oversaw a ground-breaking comic book of her own.
“Oh, Stan, do you have a few minutes?”
“For our fabulous gal Friday? Sure. Say hello to the fans, Flo Steinberg!”
“Hello, fans, it’s very nice to meet you. As Marvel’s corresponding secretary, I feel as though I know most of you from your letters.”
These words marked Florence Steinberg’s entrance on Voices of Marvel, a record the comic book publisher mailed to members of its brand-new fan club, the Merry Marvel Marching Society, in 1965. The Massachusetts native moved to New York City in 1963, a few years after finishing college, and got help from an employment agency to look for a job; the agency sent her to a magazine publisher. Despite the parent company’s innocuous name, Magazine Management, Steinberg landed at Marvel Comics.
At the time, Marvel was a one-person operation, where publisher and editor Stan Lee managed a corps of freelance artists (and did most of the writing personally). Referring to her as his “gal Friday” (after the man who aided in the title character Robinson Crusoe’s survival, in the 1719 novel by Daniel Defoe), Lee depended on Steinberg to…well, basically run everything: manage the phones, send and read mail, track assignments, pressure artists to deliver their pages on time, and get freelancers paid. Steinberg also read fan letters, answered the phone when readers called with questions and unsolicited remarks about recent stories, and greeted all the visitors, wide-eyed kids, and aspiring freelancers who turned up at the door. “Fabulous Flo,” as Lee called her (in the merry Marvel tradition of giving alliterative nicknames to staff) did all this with a sunny disposition and daffy demeanor that quickly endeared her to Marvel staff, fans, and fellow comic book creative types.
Marvel would eventually staff up and add more people in-house, but even when they did, the notion of the legendary “Marvel Bullpen”—a chummy atmosphere of comic book artists, writers, colorists, letterers, and production staff all working elbow-to-elbow at neighboring desks in the heart of Midtown Manhattan—was a fantasy that Stan Lee made up in his editorial pages, the “Bullpen Bulletins” at the back of every Marvel comic book. Nevertheless, the allure of the imaginary Marvel Bullpen was more real than reality; even though the bullpen clubhouse didn’t quite exist—Jack Kirby was at home, probably shirtless, drawing Fantastic Four at his drafting table in Long Island, only putting on a shirt and tie to come into the office once in a while to turn in pages and pick up the next script—the Marvel Bullpen was a powerful and compelling symbol to represent Marvel’s formidable artists and editors. In 1978, Kirby immortalized “the original Marvel Bullpen” in the comic book What If?, which imagined unlikely alternate stories for the company’s best known characters.
What If? number 11—with its full title, What If the Original Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four?—sees a strange alien artifact come by mail to the Marvel offices. Hanging out together in Stan Lee’s office when they open the package and unwittingly activate the device, these four bullpenners are doused in radiation and take on the powers of the Fantastic Four: the bombastic, boastful, take-charge Stan Lee turns into his own version of Mister Fantastic; production manager Sol Brodsky bursts into flame as the hot-headed Human Torch; Jack Kirby fully becomes the Marvel character that colleagues and fans always associated with him the most, the Thing; and Fabulous Flo herself is there to turn into Invisible Girl (the character, eventually renamed Invisible Woman, who many writers and commentators argue is the FF’s most powerful member, after all).
But that would all come years later; in the intervening time, Steinberg had finally left Marvel in 1968, after a tenure of five years keeping the machine oiled and running. As Marvel became more and more successful during their decade of biggest and fastest growth, she was worn down by constant hard work; more and more fans were always calling and writing and dropping in. When the company didn’t give her a raise of five dollars, Steinberg moved on.
The story of Fabulous Flo definitely doesn’t end there, of course. Steinberg possessed a keen eye for talent, intelligence, and potential, and she had helped recruit her assistant at Marvel, Linda Fite, who would go on to become a writer of comics herself and a full-time Marvel employee in many capacities. Steinberg also befriended Trina Robbins, a cartoonist and writer (who would go on to become the first female artist to draw Wonder Woman); through Robbins, Steinberg learned about the burgeoning world of underground comics, a scene referred to as "comix"—wild, rude, unruly, black-and-white comics that railed against authority and mocked a society that oppressed women, minorities, and the poor.
A restless and vivacious lover of life, a seeker of adventure, Steinberg moved around for a few years; after a buttoned-down job in communications for the oil industry, she moved to the beating heart of underground comix, San Francisco, California. After that, she spent a little time back home in the Boston area, then returned with friends to New York and went back to working in comics, at a division of Warren Publishing, a maker of horror-comic magazines. It was there and then that Steinberg's years of connections and relationships within comics led her to her next venture.
Pairing her phone book full of prominent comic book artists with her new passion for underground comix, Steinberg brought together an all-star roster of cartoonists and oversaw the one-shot Big Apple Comix in 1975. A black-and-white anthology of short stories set in New York City—the “Big Apple” of the title—Steinberg's comic book was raunchy, irreverent, highly satirical, and definitely just for adults, as the cover warned. Big Apple Comix was one of the biggest, most visible publications to come out of underground comix yet, and an important early work in the birth of “independent” comics—comic books that found distribution channels and a readership outside the confines of the big comic book publishers.
Fabulous Flo Steinberg is rightly remembered and loved for so many reasons, including her role building modern Marvel, her lifelong dedication to comics, and her pioneering work in the medium’s alternative scenes. She was also a warm personal friend to several generations of Marvel editors and staff, and a particular inspiration to the women who followed in her footsteps and joined the publisher in the following decades. Steinberg returned to Marvel in the 1990s and worked there as a proofreader for the rest of her life. She died in 2017 at the age of 78.
