The Nelson Klempstein Files

By Alfonso Crept
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In June 2003, Stan Lee’s former butler and personal assistant, Nelson Klempstein, publishes his autobiography Living, Breathing, Fruit Cake. The entire comics community has been holding its collected breaths over this allegedly revealing and controversial memoir. Klempstein began working for Lee in 1958, three years before the birth of Marvel Comics and his book promises to touch on never-before-revealed information about The Man.

Spoof Central’s Alfonso Crept spent fourteen months tracking Klempstein down. His quest began in December 2001 when he ‘got wind’ of Lee’s former assistant’s book deal. In February 2002 Klempstein received an anonymous e-mail informing him that Crept was looking for him and the next twelve months became a bizarre game of cat and mouse, as every time Crept got within shooting distance Klempstein managed to evade him and find a new place to hang his coat. However, through a strange quirk of fate, Crept hung around Klempstein’s publishers and managed to persuade the 77-year-old to talk to him over coffee and doughnuts. Here’s what happened…


The man looks just like most 77-year-olds. Wrinkly; and I’m not sure if the slightly acrid smell is the man I’m buying brunch for or something going off in the restaurant’s kitchen. Nelson Klempstein is a complete unknown. He’s never been recognised in his life and yet he was the right hand man for comics’ Mr Comics for 45 years. What intrigued me more than anything else was why he still had his pyjamas on, but Klempstein was his own man and he refused to talk about the things he didn’t want to talk about.

“One thing Stan taught me was only say the things YOU want to hear. You being me, not you, you understand? So I actually went from 1959 to 1962 only saying forty-two things. Marie Severin still looks back on those times fondly.” I was mildly intrigued about the days before Marvel became a hit. “Stan was pretty desperate. He’d taken to selling nickel and dime bags of heroin on street corners just to keep Marvel going. He’ll tell you he worked nights as either a fireman or ambulance driver, but I know the truth and you can read all about it in my new book.”

“I remember being in the offices in August 1961. Jack Kirby, who frankly was washed up even then, had been working on this really lame idea called the Feeble Four; a comic strip about four newspaper delivery boys who foil crime but always get beaten up at the end by the bigger, older kids. Stan, always brimming with brilliant ideas, took the strip away changed some of Jack’s pencil’s with the aid of Dick Ayers and changed the comic to the Fantastic Four and history was made.”

I pointed out to Klempstein that this wasn’t the recognised version of history.

“Ha, next you’ll be telling me that that balding pigeon-fancier Ditko created Spider-Man! Let me tell you, when the FF became so popular all those weaselling little artists with their “I can’t do 60 pages a month, when do I eat?” and their “I can’t live on 7 cents a page” comments. Bah! Ditko walked into Stan’s offices in rags with a couple of really useless ideas. One was called Spider Strange and the other was called Doctor Man. Let me tell you that boy was on some serious drugs at the time and his influences could have destroyed Marvel.” I was still mildly intrigued. “Spider Strange was this comic about a spider that could do magic tricks and could talk. Doctor Man was about a teenage rebel by day and a hospital surgeon by night. About the only good thing you could say about this was it was 25 years before Dougie Howser.”

I mention I’d heard that he was witness to some pretty titanic arguments between Lee and Kirby. Klempstein shook his head and began talking. “Nope. The only argument I ever saw between the two of them, other than the big fight that ended up with Kirby walking away from Marvel, was just before the creation of the Silver Surfer. I remember Kirby standing up in front of a US congressional hearing in 1977 claiming he created the ‘soarer of the spaceways’ and his side of the story was just completely wrong. Jack kept asking Stan if he could introduce some of his own cool characters and Stan had resisted because most of Jack’s were just dreadful. But by the time the FF had been going for a few years and having spawned countless other huge and successful hits was in need of a real boost, Jack came into the office with his idea of a cosmic villain called The Slightly Bald Scooter Guy, who had this big side kick called Planet Boy – Devourer of Tacos. Stan realised that all credibility would be lost if Marvel published this, so he had his new recruit Joe Sinnott redraw all of the pages and they both kept very quiet about it, more to save Jack’s embarrassment than anything. I have the originals somewhere, they’re really crap.”

I was astounded. Was this in his book? He nodded. Did he have any more fabulous stories? Yes, he said. There was a long pause. I thought for a second he was asleep but then he continued. “It was sometime in the early 1970s, I can’t be sure. Those guys, Thomas, Romita, the Buscema Brothers and the others, Adams, Steranko, Smith, and Heck, Stan didn’t want to bring them in, with their fancy drugs and their big wing-collared shirts. But within months of letting them in the place was awash with psychedelic paraphernalia and as much as Stan tried to stop them, the money men, led by that rat Martin Goodman had taken over and Stan was going to have to fight for his life. By the time Thomas went behind Stan’s back and got Conan put on the schedules it was all starting to look a bit precarious for The Man. Fortunately he had all the dirt on them, but not enough to stop him from being moved ‘upstairs’. That was when Jim Shooter and Joe Quesada hired the prostitutes, the cameramen and the farm animals. They set up the 7th floor as a real den of iniquity. Stan, only being human after all, was photographed with the goat and his career was all but finished. He was distraught. For starters he thought the goat was sincere, even if he did have to walk round the front to kiss it.”

Klempstein then began to ramble about how Avi Arad was the son of Satan, even after I pointed out there was barely a resemblance, apart from them both being humanoid. I excused myself because of an urgent need to urinate and when I returned Nelson was gone. I have no idea where he is now. I contacted his publisher and was told that the book is no longer being published. When asked, Stan Lee said he had never met someone called Nelson Klempstein, let alone employed one as his personal assistant for 45 years and he provided documented evidence to substantiate this fact.

Weird that.

Still, what does it prove, eh?

This is Alfonso Crept re-enacting the Battle of Culloden for Spoof Central at SBC.

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