Flo Steinberg

Florence Steinberg (March 17, 1939 – July 23, 2017) was an American publisher of one of the first independent comic books, the underground/alternative comics hybrid Big Apple Comix, in 1975. Additionally, as the secretary for Marvel Comics editor Stan Lee and the fledgling company's receptionist and fan liaison during the 1960s Silver Age of Comic Books, she was a key participant of and witness to Marvel's expansion from a two-person staff to a pop culture conglomerate.

Steinberg appeared in fictionalized form in Marvel Comics, spoke at comic book conventions and was the subject of a magazine profile.

Early life The daughter of a taxi-driver father and a public-stenographer mother, and raised in that city's Dorchester and Mattapan neighborhoods. and attended Roxbury Memorial High School for Girls, serving a term as president of the student council. Steinberg majored in History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was a sister of Sigma Delta Tau sorority and received her B.A. in 1960.

Career Marvel Comics in the Silver Age

In March 1963,

Marvel's only staffers at that time were Lee and Steinberg herself, with the rest of the work handled freelance. De facto production manager Sol Brodsky "would come in and set up an extra little drawing board where he would do the paste-ups and mechanicals for the ads," Steinberg said. She said that at the time, "ou were lucky to make $60 a week starting ... and Stan offered me $65, which was a big incentive to sign on!".

In addition to serving as Lee's secretary, Steinberg coordinated with and cajoled artists to turn their work in by deadline, responded to fans' letters, including sending paying members the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan-club kit, and sending artwork to the Comics Code Authority to be examined in order to carry the industry's self-censorship Comics Code seal. She also had to field uninvited fans who would appear at the office, hoping to meet the comics creators. "eople started coming up to the office. And I would have to go out and see what they wanted. And little kids would try to run by me ... and I would have to trip them. ... Everyone thought that it was nice that the kids were coming up, but at the same time ... this was a business, y'know."

Artist Jim Mooney once recalled,

The all-purpose Steinberg — given the sobriquet "Fabulous Flo", in the manner of many other Marvel Comics endearments — said that she

Later career Editor-publisher Steinberg's Big Apple Comix (Sept. 1975). Cover art by Wally Wood. Steinberg left Marvel in 1968. "I was just tired. The last years were so long because the fan mail was overwhelming. Bags of it would come in, and all the letters had to be acknowledged". The position itself, even after five years, was not particularly well-paid, and Steinberg quit after not receiving a $5 raise. Recalling the day of Steinberg's going-away party, Marie Severin observed in 2002:

A "Marvel Bullpen Bulletins" page in Marvel comics cover-dated February 1969 and necessarily written two to three months earlier noted that Steinberg "has a great new job at Rockefeller Center". Working for the trade group the American Petroleum Institute, she edited pamphlets and technical manuals for 2 1/2 years, leaving when the organization relocated to Washington, D.C. By this time she had become friends with New York City underground comix cartoonists including Trina Robbins, Kim Deitch, Michelle Brand and Roger Brand. She befriended cartoonists including Art Spiegelman and worked for Gary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company before leaving the city after a year.

She spoke at a 1974 New York Comic Art Convention panel on the role of women in comics, alongside Marie Severin, Jean Thomas (sometime-collaborator of then-husband Roy Thomas) and fan representative Irene Vartanoff. A fictionalized Steinberg was portrayed as part of an alternate-reality Fantastic Four alongside Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Sol Brodsky in Marvel Comics' What If #11 (Oct. 1978). Art by Kirby and unspecified inker. In 1975, Steinberg published Big Apple Comix, a seminal link between underground comix and modern-day independent comics, with contributors including such mainstream talents as Neal Adams, Archie Goodwin, Denny O'Neil, Al Williamson, and Wally Wood. Critic Ken Jones, in a 1986 retrospective review, suggested that Big Apple Comix and Mark Evanier's High Adventure may have been "the first true alternative comics".

As of 1984, she was managing editor of the Manhattan-based Arts Magazine. In the 1990s, Steinberg returned to work for Marvel as a proofreader, and continued in that role at least part-time through 2017.

Homages A fictionalized Steinberg starred alongside Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Sol Brodsky — all transformed into a Marvel Bullpen version of the Fantastic Four — in the alternate-reality comic What If #11 (Oct. 1978). Written and drawn by Kirby, the odd tale featured Steinberg as the character then called the Invisible Girl.

In the alternate universe series Ultimate Fantastic Four #28 (May 2006), writer Mark Millar added a brief tribute to Steinberg. She serves as the secretary to President Thor on an Earth populated almost entirely by superheroes. She warns the Human Torch not to burn the rug, to which he replies, "I know, I know. No need to be such a nag, Miss Steinberg".

Death Steinberg was 77 when she died in July 2017, from brain aneurysm complications and metastatic lung cancer.