The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Terrible news waiting for me tonight as I looked through the feed readers. Harvey Pekar died today, aged 70. The cause of death is as yet unknown, but he’d battled cancer previously and has been reported as suffering from prostrate cancer, depression and high blood pressure.

Best known for American Splendor, his long running comic series (and later the film starring Paul Giamatti and featuring Pekar himself), Pekar was a wonderfully human storyteller, amazingly adept at telling intensely personal stories combining his irascible nature with a genuine compassion. He was a true great in modern comics, plowing his own furrow long before it was fashionable to do so, self publishing, self distributing, keeping his issues in print whenever he could. His influence could, and still can be seen in generation after generation of great artists.

There are few true modern greats in comics, but I think Heidi has something when she says this in memory of the man:

“Pekar was immensely influential on bringing real-life themes and literary influences to comics. While the many many retrospectives and remembrances are sure to come in the next few days will give him his place, putting him besidesAlan Moore as the most influential comics writer of the 20th Century would not be amis.”

For more detailed obituary, The Daily Crosshatch, The Comics Beat and Comics Reporter are good places to start, while in Mediaite his friend and collaborator Michael Malice also remembers Harvey (and how he only found out via Molly Crabapple, who in turn found out from Twitter).

But I want to talk about Harvey’s comics finding me. I was a teen, just coming out of a superhero habit, slowly expanding my reading; Grendel, Mage, Cerebus, Nexus, Groo, American Flagg -- these were the next step for me. Then Harvey Pekar’s work found me at just the right moment in my reading life, exactly when I was perfectly placed to fall in love with it. His personal, small scale stories hit home as something completely different and absolutely marvellous. His observations were always sharp and true, his humanity obvious, his intelligence even more so.

(Harvey picking out artists for American Splendor, from the Daily Crosshatch’s video upload)

There was something uniquely engrossing about the way the man spoke, about the way his mind worked and about the way he managed to get the very distillate of his personality into his writing. Yet this obvious genius, this wonderful writer struggled to find success and constantly questioned his own ability. Something clicked with me immediately on reading my first American Splendour and I’ve followed Pekar ever since. American Splendour became a wonderful surprise whenever it appeared on the shelves. Tonight I shall settle back with a copy of my favourite of all his works; Our Cancer Year and mourn the loss of a great.

For more Pekar comics, head over to The Pekar Project. Sadly, these webcomics will be the last we ever see from Pekar.

A sad, sad day for me. A worse day for comics. Thank you Harvey.