Harvey Pekar, the famed Cleveland comics artist and hospital filing clerk, died Monday. His ongoing comics series was called American Splendor and was made into a movie. He had recently started an ongoing webcomics series called The Pekar Project with Jeff Newelt at Smith Mag. Here are few remembrances of Pekar's life:
Here's the AV Club news story with an additional essay from Noel Murray:
He wasn’t some working-class crank using comic books to bitch about his
job. He was a visionary, using a populist medium to offer an alternative
perspective on art, history, literature, and “success.”
From Joanna Connors in The Cleveland Plain-Dealer:
Unlike the superheroes who ordinarily inhabit the pages of comic books,
Pekar could neither leap tall buildings in a single bound, nor move
faster than a speeding bullet. Yet his comics suggested a different sort
of heroism: The working-class, everyman heroics of simply making it
through another day, with soul — if not dignity — intact.
In the L.A. Times, Victoria Looseleaf talks about Pekar on public access television and how he almost got kicked off Letterman:
I know you had health issues, Harvey — cancer, high blood pressure,
asthma, and that bugaboo, depression. But you also gave countless
people happiness — and hope. I'm gonna miss you, friend, not only your
formidable talents but because you're part of what makes Cleveland
special.
In an interview with MTV about The Pekar Project:
“I'd like to see the comics' style expanded. I'd like to see artists
synthesize traditional comics arts style with fine-arts styles or
whatever. I like to see innovation. I don't like it when an art form
becomes stagnant.” — Harvey Pekar
