What's in a Name? A Robert Crumb-illustrated page from American Splendor by Harvey Pekar
I love Harvey Pekar. Okay, I've never actually met the man. And who knows if I could have actually tolerated him if he were my next door neighbor. But I have nothing but respect for his achievements. Looking past the juvenile wish fulfillment, corporate ownership, and slick genre conventions that dominated (and still do) the industry, he saw in comics the perfect medium for autonomous artistic expression. And in his American Splendor comics he told extraordinarily blunt, unromantic, even banal tales of his own rather ordinary life. For a long time he worked for little to no financial reward, and gained only intermittent, if dubious mainstream recognition. But he kept plugging away with it, and his comics were eventually adapted into a critically lauded movie with the same name. To me, American Splendor was a revelation when I first encountered it because, in contrast to most of the comics I had read (and my own upbringing), it was grounded on an uncompromising, blue-collar, adult perspective. I was immediately hooked. Others have since followed in creating their own autobiographical works. But Harvey's unsentimental voice remains a singular presence that I will miss.
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