More Than a Boys' Club

 

My first personal contact with anyone at Marvel Comics was with Flo Steinberg. My parents had reached out to Marvel on my behalf in 1964 in hopes of locating some early Marvel issues that I had been unable to find to fill in a hole in my collection (a hole caused by a childhood friend who helped himself to a few books from my stack of Marvels one evening when he spent the night at my house). 

While the letter that Mom wrote was addressed to Stan Lee, it was Flo Steinberg who wrote back. Stan had asked her to send a stack of several issues from that list that Marvel still had in their office files--but he also asked Flo to send me a list of the books that Marvel had for sale. Apparently Marvel had heard from others who wanted back issues, and Flo had inherited that job. She sent a list of alpha-numerically ordered comics, with a simple price structure: 25¢ for a regular comic, 50¢ for an annual (which was about double the cover price, but that included postage). Flo's letter was cordial and kind. I had seen references to "Fabulous Flo" in various Marvel comics before, but this experience showed me how she earned her nickname. For several years (until the advent of mail-order back issue dealers  like Howard Rogofsky and Robert Bell, who ran ads in Marvel Comics) Flo became an invaluable source for Marvel issues that I had missed. (It was easy to miss books back then, in the days before comic shops, because most groceries and drugstores didn't care which comics they got, so long as they had comics to fill the racks. So you could never be certain that the store who got last month's Fantastic Four would get this month's Fantastic Four...)

For me, Flo was as vital a part of Marvel Comics as Stan, Jack, Steve, Don, and Dick were—and maybe even more, because none of them sent me manila envelopes with back issues in them!

When I saw the first mention of Margaret Stohl's Super Visible: The Story of the Women of Marvel Comics, I initially thought that it focused on female characters (the image of Sue Storm, Invisible Girl, not he dust jacket misled me). Once I saw that it actually focused on the women who helped make Marvel through their work as office managers, business directors, editors, writers, artists, and more. I was intrigued: first, I wanted to see if it talked about Flo at all (it does—and it's heartbreaking to learn that she left Marvel because they wouldn't give see fit to give her a $5 a week raise). Then I wanted to see what it said about other women who have worked at Marvel over the years, many of whom I interacted with professionally as a retailer and as writer of Comic Shop News. 

Marie Severin, Jo Duffy, Anne Nocenti, Bobbie Chase, Trina Robbins, Paty Cockrum, Louise Simonson, Jean Thomas, Virginia Romita, Christie Scheele, June Brigman, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Janice Chiang, Amanda Conner, G. Willow Wilson, Irene Vartanoff... they're all in here. But most importantly to me, Carol Kalish is here. Carol passed away many years ago, far too young, but her acumen with both comics and business made her invaluable to Marvel's prominence
. Carol was my barometer: any book that didn't mention her contributions to Marvel couldn't pass muster. Thankfully, Super Visible acknowledges what Carol did for Marvel and for the comics industry as a whole.

The book focuses on many other creators with whom I haven't been lucky enough to interact professionally, including some about whom I actually knew very little. It's informative, but most importantly, it gives many of these women a voice to tell their own stories in oral history form, and their stories are fascinating. Many of them could be subject of an entire book on their own—and maybe that will happen down the line. But right now, Super Visible is the best way to learn about the women who made Marvel far more than a boys' club.