Harvey Pekar passed away yesterday. He was one of the greats.
Read about this in CSN the other day. RIP.
I’ve yet to have read American Splendor, but he was certainly an underground comix legend in every respect. Farewell, Mr. Pekar.
“Comic book writer Harvey Pekar, whose American Splendor was made into a 2003 film starring Paul Giammati, has died,” reports the Boston Globe’s Steve Greenlee. “He was 70.”
“Pekar was a VA hospital file clerk, an obsessive-compulsive who grappled with loneliness and anxiety,” blogs Sean P Means of the Salt Lake Tribune. "He channeled those feelings into writing, inspired by his friend R Crumb (who then lived in Cleveland, working in a greeting-card company while working on his art) to write a comic book. Crumb illustrated the first American Splendor strips in 1972, and contributed to Pekar’s first full-fledged books, which he began publishing in 1976. ‘He’s the soul of Cleveland,’ Crumb told The Plain Dealer in a 1994 interview. ‘He’s passionate and articulate. He’s grim. He’s Jewish. I appreciate the way he embraces all that darkness.’"
Read more:-
Actually saw his bio-pic a few months ago, really decent look into his life. This guy had a great way of showing how the “mundane” is so fascinating.
I really need to get my hands on an omnibus of American Splendour and pay tribute to one of the great chroniclers of life’s mediocrity.