One of the appeals of Marvel Comics in the sixties was the wonderful rapport we readers felt with the makers of those comics. In some ways, I preferred the content of certain DC books but there was no denying the impersonal, sometimes condescending tone to those comics' letter pages and house ads. The DCs felt like your uncle was telling you a story. The Marvels felt like a friend was the teller…and that friend didn't regard you as a child. If you wrote to DC, you wrote to "Dear Editor." If you wrote to Marvel, you wrote to "Dear Stan and Jack" or "Dear Stan and Steve" — but mainly to Stan.
That came from Stan Lee, of course, but a lot of it was by way of the lady he described as "My Gal Friday, Fabulous Flo Steinberg." That was Stan-Speak for "secretary" and it was appropriate to make a bit of a star out of her because she did so much to enhance the company's image. She corresponded with readers, wrote to fanzines and just seemed to be an important presence in that office. I later learned that she did practically everything there that did not involve the actual writing or drawing of the comics.
She went to work for Stan around 1963 and for a time, the office consisted of her, Stan (who'd stay home to work on scripts a day or two a week) and the occasional presence of artist Sol Brodsky, who'd come in a day or two a week on a freelance basis to design ads and covers and to do art corrections. Eventually, the operation grew and eventually, Flo tired of the grind. When the publisher refused her a $5 raise in 1968, she quit. She relocated for a time in San Francisco and dabbled in the publishing of underground comics. She finally found her way back to New York and a proofreading job at Marvel. She died last Sunday at the approximate age of 78.
In my never-ending quest to know as much about Marvel History as possible, I spoke with Flo on a couple of occasions. She was sweet and friendly…and not that I was looking for it but she didn't have a bad thing to say about anyone in the creative end of Marvel. Stan was great. Jack was great. Steve was great. Everyone there was great though the greatness did not extend to the folks in the business division. She told me that one of the reasons she got into publishing in the seventies was that she'd seen so many people do it wrong that she figured she could do it right.
Still, she was one charming lady. Stan, when you're right, you're right. Flo was fabulous.