Remembering Harvey Pekar

By Josh Spilker » "I don't like it when an art form becomes stagnant." -Harvey Pekar

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

Posted on July 13, 2010. More on: books, codex, comics, harvey pekar