The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

The above quote comes from friend and collaborator of Harve, Dean Haspiel, who also pointed the way to this article in The New York Times where a number of friends, artistic collaborators and, of course, his wife Joyce, recall our beloved comics curmudgeon and everyman hero.The article also discusses The Pekar Project on SmithMag (which has long been a site we love for their championing of good comics strips), discussing the way in which payments for work on the strip, which used a variety of artists (most of whom were delighted at the chance to collaborate with Harvey), were deferred against the possibility of a pay day if a collected edition book were published further down the line – which given SmithMag brought us critically acclaimed web series Shooting War and AD – New Orleans After the Deluge, which went on to get a lot of word of mouth online, secure publishing deals leading to critically acclaimed print editions is not a bad plan: build an interest in a project in the relatively lower cost web medium to generate more interest in the later print edition.

(a page from the Pekar Project by and (c) Harvey Pekar’s estate and Joseph Remnant, published SmithMag)

“I totally understand, from a 20th-century point of view, why a deal like that might sound nuts” notes editor Jeff Newelt in the article, but he points out that slower build up while waiting for a payoff can lead to the difference between a title which sells to a small, special interest group of readers or which “sells 60,000 or 70,000 copies instead of 5,000.” Of course it isn’t a model that can work for all – artists need money coming in regularly like everyone else to pay the rent, but with the Pekar Project using a rotation of different artists I imagine that makes things a little easier, allowing artists to participate, but as they aren’t drawing every single episode they still have time to work on projects that pay the bills in the here and now while the online project begins generating more interest for a hoped for deal further down the line.

However the article also goes on to note that Joyce was not happy with the collaboration with the only female artist involved, Tara Seibel, and there was speculation the she wasn’t sure she would okay an eventual book edition with her contribution included, although I’m sure any problems will be solved when serious talk begins on creating a book version of the strip. There are, however, other posthumously published works in the pipeline already, including Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland for Zip Comics (with Joseph Remnant who also worked on the Pekar Project) and a couple more books from publishing giant Random House to come too. Nice to know there are still some new Harvey works to look forward to.