I first met Fabulous Flo Steinberg (who passed away on July 23) when I was eight years old, not that she knew it at the time. And not that I knew it at the time either.
What happened was, I’d read an issue of the Fantastic Four during the first few years of that title in which The Thing said he had a headache. I’m no longer sure why he made that claim. Perhaps it had something to do with the Yancy Street Gang getting on his nerves. In any case, little kid me was incensed.
How could The Thing have a headache? After all, wasn’t he super?
So I sat down and scribbled a note to Marvel Comics, and soon received a postcard back explaining it all.
“You see, Scott,” said the card. “It was a super headache!”
The card was signed “Stan & the Gang,” but it was, of course, from Flo, who at that time would have been in her first year as Marvel’s “Corresponding Secretary and Gal Friday.”
Flo’s face was first revealed to fans in the pages of Marvel Tales #1 (which bore a cover date of 1964), and we first heard her voice on a record which was produced in 1965 as part of the package I received when I joined the Merry Marvel Marching Society.
She sent me that membership kit when I was 10, along with a button I wore Sunday afternoon at the Society of Illustrators as I gathered with her friends, which included many current and former Marvel Bullpenners, to remember her.
There’s so much about Flo that’s important to know, but what I said Sunday, and what I want those who weren’t there to know about her most, is that when I was a kid, before I ever really knew her, she managed to make me feel important, and cared for, and liked. And that when I actually met her years later after I began to work for Marvel, I learned the person she’d made me believe she was and the person she really was were the same. That’s rare.
The way she made me feel when I was a kid receiving postcards and No Prizes from her in the mail? She made me feel the same way years later when we were the two worst players on Marvel’s softball team.
Here are some of the others who rose to remember Flo. I’m sorry I didn’t capture them all. But I was glad to have been there with them for a few hours Sunday to reminisce. (And thank you, Jared Osborn, for snapping the photo of me above as I shared my own thoughts.)
Larry Hama
Kim Deitch
Steve Bunche
Joe Quesada
Nelson Faro DeCastro
Nick Lowe
Jules Johnson
Nelson Ribeiro
James Taveras
Darren Auck
Marie Javins
Jacque Porte
Wilson Ramos, Jr.
Dan Slott
Michael Kaluta
Jared Osborn
Once the speakers had finished, I lingered to catch up with old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years, such as Mike Kaluta …
… as well as with Jim Salicrup and Danny Fingeroth.
But I even felt a connection with those I hadn’t known back in my former comics life, for as I spoke to them, I was quickly made aware of a Bullpen continuum. That is, the staffers trained by the people I knew were the staffers who trained the people I’d just met.
Flo would have gotten a kick out of that.
So though there was sadness to the afternoon, there was warmth there as well. And many smiles. And much laughter, particularly as people did their impersonations of Flo’s unique voice, all different, but each spot on.
I wish she could have been there to hear them.