"Everybody's like everybody else, and everybody's different from everybody else." -- Harvey Pekar
Harvey Lawrence Pekar (; October 8, 1939 — July 12, 2010) was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.
Pekar described American Splendor as "an autobiography written as it's happening. The theme is about staying alive. Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't."
"American Splendor is just an ongoing journal. It's an ongoing autobiography. I started it when I was in my early 30s, and I just keep going.""I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor.""I continue to be disappointed that people don't try and diversify the kind of work they are doing in comics.""I decided I was going to tell these stories. I went around and met Crumb. He was the cartoonist. I started realizing comics weren't just kid stuff.""I don't write about certain arguments I have with my wife. I'd get my head torn off if wrote about certain things.""I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad.""I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.""I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.""I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.""I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.""I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.""I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.""I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.""I'd been familiar with comics, and I'd collected 'em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn't much I was interested in.""I'm a guy that likes to sit in one place.""I'm doing research for a large comic book on the Beat Generation guys - Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and those guys.""I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers.""It didn't take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.""It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.""It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.""It's extremely seldom that anybody wants me to change what I've written about them. Generally I portray them in a good light, if they're friends.""Letterman... he got his problems. We don't get along too well.""My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.""People who are readers of fiction aren't particularly interested in comic books.""People writing about me have said that I've influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them.""Plays have been made of my comics.""The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet.""There hasn't been enough change in comics to suit me. I don't know why exactly.""Things improved a little bit in the '80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the '90s."
Harvey Pekar and his younger brother Allen were born in Cleveland, Ohio to Saul and Dora Pekar, immigrants from Bialystok, Poland. Saul Pekar was a Talmudic scholar who owned a grocery store on Kinsman Avenue, with the family living above the store. Harvey Pekar graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1957, then attended Case Western Reserve University, where he dropped out after a year. He then served in the United States Navy, and after discharge returned to Cleveland where he worked odd jobs before being hired as file clerk at Cleveland's Veteran's Administration Hospital. He held this job even after gaining fame, finally retiring in 2001.
Pekar's friendship with Robert Crumb led to the creation of the self-published, autobiographical comic book series American Splendor. Crumb and Pekar became friends through their mutual love of jazz records "Who is Harvey Pekar?", WKSU.org when Crumb was living in Cleveland in the mid-1960s. Crumb's work in underground comics led Pekar to see the form's possibilities, saying, "Comics could do anything that film could do. And I wanted in on it." Momo College It took Pekar a decade to do so: "I theorized for maybe ten years about doing comics." "Harvey Pekar", Metajam.mobi Pekar laid out some stories with crude stick figures and showed them to Crumb and another artist, Robert Armstrong. Impressed, they both offered to illustrate, and soon Pekar's story "Crazy Ed" appeared in Crumb's The People's Comics, and Crumb became the first artist to illustrate American Splendor. The comic documents daily life in the aging neighborhoods of Pekar's native Cleveland. The first issue of American Splendor appeared in 1976.
Pekar's most well-known and longest-running collaborators include Crumb, Gary Dumm, Greg Budgett, Spain Rodriguez, Joe Zabel, Gerry Shamray, Frank Stack, Mark Zingarelli, and Joe Sacco. In the 2000s, he teamed regularly with artists Dean Haspiel and Josh Neufeld. Others cartoonists who worked with him include Jim Woodring, Chester Brown, Alison Bechdel, Gilbert Hernandez, Eddie Campbell, David Collier, Drew Friedman, Ho Che Anderson, Rick Geary, Ed Piskor, Hunt Emerson, Bob Fingerman, and Alex Wald; as well as such non-traditional illustrators as Pekar's wife, Joyce Brabner, and comics writer Alan Moore.
Stories from the American Splendor comics have been collected in many books and anthologies.
American Splendor film
A film adaptation of American Splendor was released in 2003, directed by Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman. It featured Paul Giamatti as Pekar, as well as appearances by Pekar himself. Pekar wrote about the effects of the film in American Splendor: Our Movie Year.
In 2006, Pekar released a four-issue American Splendor miniseries through the DC Comics imprint Vertigo. This was collected in the American Splendor: Another Day paperback. In 2008 Vertigo released a second "season" of American Splendor that was collected in the American Splendor: Another Dollar paperback.
In addition to his autobiographical work on American Splendor, Pekar wrote a number of biographies. The first of these, 2003's American Splendor: Unsung Hero, documented the Vietnam War experience of Robert McNeill, one of Pekar's African-American coworkers at Cleveland's VA hospital.
Other comics work
On October 5, 2005, the DC Comics imprint Vertigo released Pekar's autobiographical hardcover The Quitter, with artwork by Dean Haspiel. The book detailed Pekar's early years.
In 2006 Pekar released another biography for Ballantine/Random House, Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story, about the life of Michael Malice, who was the founding editor of OverheardinNewYork.com Overheard in New York | The Voice of the City
Pekar was also given the honor of being the first guest editor for the collection The Best American Comics 2006 published by Houghton Mifflin, the first comics publication in the "Best American series" series.
In June 2007 Pekar collaborated with student Heather Roberson and artist Ed Piskor on the book Macedonia, which centers around Roberson's studies in the country. Macedonia - Yahoo! Shopping Sequart Research & Literacy Organization Columns - High-Low #15: Pekar, Piskor and a Preview of Macedonia
January 2008 saw another biographical work from Pekar, Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History, released through Hill & Wang.
In March 2009 Pekar released The Beats, a history of the Beat Generation including Kerouac and Ginsberg, illustrated by Ed Piskor. In May 2009 he released Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation.
In 2010, Pekar launched a webcomic with the online magazine Smith, titled The Pekar Project.
In the late 1980s, Pekar's comic book success led to eight guest appearances on Late Night with David Letterman. His confrontational style and overt on-air criticism of General Electric (which owned NBC) led to the show banning him as a guest until the early 1990s.
Pekar was a prolific freelance jazz and book critic. As a jazz critic he typically focused on significant figures from jazz's golden age but has also championed such out-of-mainstream artists as Birth, Scott Fields, Fred Frith, and Joe Maneri. He has also won awards for his essays which were broadcast on public radio. In August 2007, Pekar was featured on the Cleveland episode of No Reservations with host Anthony Bourdain.
While American Splendor theater adaptations have occurred before , in 2009 Pekar made his theatrical debut with Leave Me Alone!, a jazz opera for which Pekar wrote the libretto. Leave Me Alone! featured music by Dan Plonsey and premiered at Oberlin College on January 31, 2009.
In 2009, Pekar was featured in The Cartoonist, a documentary film on the life and work of Jeff Smith, creator of Bone.
Pekar was married from 1960 to 1972 to his first wife, Karen Delaney. His second wife was Helen Lark Hall. Pekar's third wife was writer Joyce Brabner, with whom he collaborated on Our Cancer Year, a graphic novel autobiography of his harrowing yet successful treatment for lymphoma. He lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio with Brabner and their foster daughter Danielle.
Shortly before 1 a.m. on July 12, 2010, Pekar's wife found him dead in his Cleveland Heights, Ohio, home. No immediate cause was determined. Pekar had been diagnosed with cancer for the third time in his life and about to undergo treatment. Pekar was cremated and buried in Lake View Cemetery, next to Eliot Ness. .
Assessing his influence and legacy, fellow cartoonist Seth said,
According to a September 2010 New York Times article, many Pekar works are planned to be released posthumously :
Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland - A graphic history of the city of Cleveland, Ohio and Pekar's personal upbringing there. Illustrated by Joseph Remnant (Zip Comics).
Huntington, West Virginia, "On the Fly" - Stories of Pekar promoting the 2003 American Splendor film (Random House).
Harvey and Joyce’s Big Book of Marriage - Co-authored by Joyce Brabner (Random House)
Not the Israel My Parents Promised - Pekar's thoughts on Zionism and Israel. Illustrated by JT Waltman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar (Doubleday, 1986)
More American Splendor (Doubleday, 1987) ISBN 0-385-24073-2
The New American Splendor Anthology (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991) ISBN 0-941423-64-6
Our Cancer Year, with Joyce Brabner and Frank Stack (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994) ISBN 1-56858-011-8
American Splendor Presents: Bob & Harv's Comics, with R. Crumb (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996) ISBN 1-56858-101-7
American Splendor: Unsung Hero, with David Collier (Dark Horse, 2003) ISBN 1-59307-040-3
American Splendor: Our Movie Year (Ballantine Books, 2004) ISBN 0-345-47937-8
Best of American Splendor (Ballantine Books, 2005) ISBN 0-345-47938-6
The Quitter, with Dean Haspiel (DC/Vertigo, 2005) ISBN 1-4012-0399-X
Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story, with Gary Dumm (Ballantine Books, 2006) ISBN 0-345-47939-4
Macedonia, with Heather Roberson and Ed Piskor (Ballantine Books, 2006) ISBN 0-3454-9899-2
American Splendor: Another Day (DC/Vertigo, 2007) ISBN 978-1-4012-1235-3
Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History (Hill and Wang, 2008) ISBN 978-0809095391
American Splendor: Another Dollar (2009) ISBN 978-1-4012-2173-7
The Beats (2009) ISBN 978-0-2856-3858-7
Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation (2009) ISBN 978-1-59558-321-5
Circus Parade by Jim Tully. Foreword by Harvey Pekar. Introduction by Paul J. Bauer and Mark Dawidziak. (Kent State Univ. Press, 2009) 978-1-60635-001-0
