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. (more…)