by Harvey Pekar & Others
REVIEW BY JIM OTTAVIANI:
There are almost no comics from the mid-1970s worth reading again out of any motivation other than nostalgia... and mighty few of those. In fact, many consider this period one of the medium's nadirs. Mainstream (ie superhero) comics were as bland a corporate hash as you can imagine. House styles dominated the art, and the stories were even more stale than the storytelling. By this time underground comics had passed their peak as well, and were as formulaic as the men-in-tights books. For the most part, they simply replaced obligatory fight scenes with obligatory sex and dope gags. As Lee Mars put it in Comic Book Rebels: "What a lot of the mainstream talent did when they were 'unleashed' was to do the same stories they had done before - only the girls didn't have clothes on. Wow - what a breakthrough!"
Enter Harvey Pekar with a real breakthrough. In 1976, his American Splendor brought unflinching realism into comics. He billed his book as coming "from off the streets of Cleveland" and that's the kind of stories readers got - no bombast in either tagline or narrative, no romancing of either sex or violence. Pekar combined the underground's do-it-yourself ethic with a slightly more mainstream approach in that he acknowledged he couldn't do it all. His strength is in dialogue and observation, not in art. So he employed some of comics' best talent (most notably R. Crumb) and led a move towards realism in comics storytelling that continues today.
His narrative range is broad; from the introspective and static in "The Harvey Pekar Name Story", "An Everyday Horror Story" and "I'll Be Forty-Three on Friday (How I'm Living Now)" to aggressive and manic in "American Splendor Assaults The Media" and "Violence". These stories typify the early issues of American Splendor and still ring true. Reading them once and then returning to them after a long absence, you'll realise how many small details have remained etched in memory and continue to resonate. Pekar's first ten issues are exceptional comics, and for good reason. They're honest, well rendered (both in words and pictures), and seminal.
ALAN MOORE:
I’ve always considered Harvey a dear man and a great friend, as well as an amazing influence on me, and a whole generation of autobiographical graphic artists. He’s a pillar of the comics medium. Without him, the comics landscape would be an impoverished field... What I really admired about Harvey was, he was a resolutely blue collar artist, and one of only working class voices that I’d come across in comics with a level of political commitment, especially a left-wing one. I mean, this man had a spectacular meltdown on the Letterman show about a strike going on at the network that it was not publicizing. He never tried to rise above that class.
ROBERT CRUMB:
(from the introduction to American Splendor: Bob & Harv's Comics)
Hardly anything actually happens... Mostly it's just people talking, or Harvey by himself, panel after panel, haranguing the hapless reader. There's not much in the way of heroic struggle, the triumph of good over evil, resolution of conflict, people over coming great odds, stuff like that. It's kinda sorta more like real life... real life in late twentieth century Cleveland as it lurches along from one day to the next... And Harvey Pekar is their witness. He is one of them. He reports the truth of life in Cleveland as he sees it, hears it, feels it in his manic-depressive nervous system.
FURTHER READING:
TCJ Interview: Previously Unpublished Interview With Harvey Pekar (2019)
TCJ Blood & Thunder: Pekar vs Fiore (1990)
TCJ Review: Harvey Pekar's Cleveland (2012)
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