I miss bookstores. Being able to walk up and down the aisles, pulling out a title that sounds intriguing, perusing the dust jacket flap, sometimes sitting down on the floor and reading the first couple of pages…just killing a couple of hours lost in a bibliophile’s heaven. Okay, bookstores aren’t entirely gone, but they are,…
The Avengers opens today. As near as I can tell from the Internets, I’m the last person in the world to see it. The New York Daily News reviewed it on Monday, since apparently everyone in the city has the option of going to a screening. I hope to catch it this weekend, like a…
Way to go, [[[American Splendor]]] fans! Donors have given enough money to honor author Harvey Pekar with a desk and sculpture to be installed at the Cleveland Height-University Heights Public Library. Joyce Brabner, Pekar’s widow, said in early November that $30,000 had to be raised by Dec. 5, for his tribute. The campaign, started online…
[[[Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & The New Land]]] edited by Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle with Hershl Hartman Abrams Comicarts, 240 pages It always seemed to me like mine was the last secular “Jewish generation” in America. Born in the mid-1950s, in the depths of Brooklyn in a neighborhood adjacent to the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of…
Comic-book writer Harvey Pekar, whose autobiographical comic series American Splendor was made into a 2003 Oscar nominated film starring Paul Giamatti as Harvey in addition to Harvey appearing as himself, has been found dead in his Ohio home. He was 70. Cleveland Heights police Capt. Michael Cannon says officers were called to Pekar’s home by…
YIVO’s “Comics and the Jewish American Dream” interview series (moderated by Danny Fingeroth) concludes tonight at 7:00 pm with Harvey Pekar, creator of American Splendor. Go and see where Joaquin Phoenix learned how to behave on Letterman. Admission at the door has been dropped to $10. All you have to do is say the secret…
The YIVO Institute presents one-on-one interviews with Al Jaffee, Jules Feiffer, and Harvey Pekar. YIVO’s “Comics and the American Jewish Dream” series kicks off Wednesday, January 21 at 7:00 pm with: "The Mad, Mad, Mad (Jewish) World Of Al Jaffee" A graduate of New York’s High School of Art and Design, Jaffee worked as an…
Harvey Pekar: Conversations is a new collection of interviews with the celebrated graphic novelist. Now available from the University Press of Mississippi, the book spans 25 years of interviews that have been drawn from a wide variety of places, from fanzines and radio to The Washington Post. The book was assembled by Mike Rhode who…
In the remote chance that you’ve foolishly passed up the opportunity to read the free online Next-Door Neighbor comics project at Smith magazine, here’s a reminder that Harvey Pekar’s contribution is up now. The art — a page of which is posted below — is by Rick Veitch.
For several decades now, Harvey Pekar has existed in comic book form as a straight-talking, ill-tempered, hypochondriac who can’t go very long without finding something to complain about. The latest edition of his American Splendor strikes me as an important moment in that career, then, as Pekar is settling into a more mellow existence. In…
Everyone has a story – at least one. Every human life could be told in some way, to illustrate a point, or evoke an emotion, or just entertain an audience. Postcards attempts to tell some of those stories, or to create stories based on tiny pieces of real people’s lives, almost randomly – to invent…
With two years of The Best American Comics down now, it’s clear just how much the individual editor can influence the choice of comics. Last year, Harvey Pekar leaned towards autobiographical comics and towards long, complete works. For this second year, Chris Ware similarly goes where we’d expect him to go and picks a lot…
