What Has become of Harvey Pekar!?

RIP, Harvey:

http://www.wtam.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=122520&article=7342270

Will flick through my American Splendor anthology tonight in his honour.

nooooooooo

This is horribly sad news.

Awful news.

RIP Harv...I hope Letterman gives him his due.

aw man! so sad. RIP Harvey. You were a lovably irascible bastard.

personal favorite moment = the Chester Brown/Harvey phone conversation strip for the TB first edition of Yummy Fur

pekar's strips always lived or died by who was wielding the pen/brush = i wish chester b. had drawn some american splendor shit.

yeah!

I can't find it online (no real surprise there) - Chester draws himself as a little bunny and Harvey is a bug-eyed trollish version of himself. strip ends with Harvey shouting incredulously at Chester because the latter has never watched "Degrassi Junior High"

i am very sad harvey p is dead, of course, but the man did have a long and productive career that no one could have foreseen back in '76. (i mean: along with crumb and sim and spiegelman/griffith and a handful of others he basically invented alt-comics as distinct from the undergrounds.) aside from the crumb-drawn stuff i've always been sorta cold on a.p. itself, but the man's impact cannot be denied.

yeah AP is pretty erratic quality-wise, seems like he kinda let whoever was conveniently at hand do the illustrating - agree that his stuff lived or died depending on the artist. his good stuff is great though. and the movie is seriously underrated, easily one of the best comic-based films to come out of Hollywood.

loved the movie

yeah I was quite surprised by how great the movie was

This is terrible! Somehow I hadn't realized that he was that old, or could be that close to death. All those American Splendor anthologies, graphic novels and so on made it seem like he was infinite, like any comic book superhero. RIP.

v. sad to hear this - don't know any other comic bk guys who cld also write sleevenotes for a miles davis alb

What a bummer. This guy was my personal hero. At least he got to do things that maybe he felt like he "made it" in these last years of his life.

He and his family were present for a local screening of the American Splendor movie and had a Q and A with the audience after.
They seemed like really exceptional people.

Damn, he's number two on Twitter trends just behind Iker Casillas. Amazing, really.

Here's the Chesater Brown one...I don't have a scanner so I took a (not very good) picture of it. ILX will probably resize it to be too small to read, so I'll just link to the image.

I saw him at an in-store for 'The Beats' a couple months ago and he looked really beat. someone asked for his 'words of wisdom' which basically boiled down to Save for Your Retirement, as he'd been a slacker in his govt job all his life, didn't have any real savings or Soc Security and now had to keep pumping out books/do the comic store circuit to pay the bills. "Don't Do What I Did"... depressing but Real, which of course was entirely appropriate for Harvey.

Abbott you are the bestest!

Sad news. RIP.

(altho the one I was thinking of is the one Harvey is ref'ing in the strip you posted - but that one's great too. love the Batman)

xp

Baruch dayan emet. :(

deeply deeply sad.

http://www.josephremnant.com/jr/news/Entries/2010/6/21_Cleveland_etc..html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBr4NxujLvw

First LeBron, now Harvey...a sad day for my hometown.

That Letterman clip is hard to watch.

very bummed

Very sad. He was a good man.

I'd never seen that Pekar on Letterman clip before. Harvey, man...you gotta love people who stand for their principles, even in awkward & kind of ineffectual ways.

I think Harvey knows what he's doing in that clip - he's both taking the principled high ground AND giving a platform for laffs. Harvey was not stupid about this kind of thing.

That Letterman clip is hard to watch.

No, I don't think you "get it"

Man, there's probably three hours worth of reading (of comics he wrote) about that 3-minute clip. That thing is legend in my mind! It's like seeing the missing footage from the Magnificent Ambersons, for me, except I haven't read at least five comics discussing the missing footage & depicting it in different ways. And also it's on youtube.

Fuck. Sad sad sad.

Loved the ep of 'No Reservations' Bourdain did in Cleveland with Pekar.

Goddamit

No, I don't think you "get it"

Go fuck yourself?

Maybe that was a bit harsh.

Also loved the movie - I'd never heard of him previously, but then I was too young for Letterman in the 80s. He seemed like a genuinely decent and productive human being.

I think if all you see in that clip is Letterman making fun of Harvey yr missing a fair amount of what's going on

It's just a drag to me because I know that Pekar loved appearing on that show (or at least loved chatting with Dave), and while it was a pretty ballsy and appropriate thing for him to say, I wish it didn't result in him being banned from the show.

I no more took their interaction at face value than I did Andy Kaufman's appearances, certainly not after Pekar came on repeatedly and said similar things.

The letterman clips are crazy wow and all, but I'm mourning him a lot more as the guy who stood up for bohemian shnookdom in his comics. For a guy writing record reviews out in central PA, he was sort of how I assume Bruce Springsteen is for guys who like cars.

Loved the ep of 'No Reservations' Bourdain did in Cleveland with Pekar.

^^^^^^ on this. RIP

certainly not after Pekar came on repeatedly and said similar things.

did you disagree with Harvey's conclusions in A Step Out Of The Nest, then?

Oops, I didn't realize that the Harvey Pekar discussion was on this thread too. I'll just repeat what I said earlier:

I'm one of those mainstream lamers who only got interested in comics after seeing American Splendor (the film). The first thing I did after seeing the movie was tracking down a few compilations of the comic itself. I guess I would have come around to reading graphic novels at some point, but his stories were the catalyst for me.

RIP Harvey Pekar

Love Harvey but really think the movie sucked. I hope the books are his legacy, not that

What didn't you like about it?

It was a bad movie with silly acting and forced quirkiness, just seemed like a generic American indie movie. It was a poor ad for his books. Hope it made him some money though.

I liked the movie. I was always curious about what Toby was like IRL, so that was really exciting for me. "genuine nyerd"

Right then It is sad but he survived cancer for a while at least. He will be remembered and cherished! Perhaps I will write an eulogy in the next issue of INCREDIBLE MASTER TREASURE HUNTERS - my new mag.

http://issuu.com/imth/docs/imth_1

Well I guess I now know what has become of him. I love his eyes.

I don't know what A Step Out Of The Nest is. I've read plenty of things of his over the years but don't know titles.

Pekar and Kupferberg, who will be the third angry visionary to go? (Steinbrenner doesn't count.)

some links:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2058

I don't know what A Step Out Of The Nest is.

The first comic-book-sized issue of American Splendour, on Dark Horse. All about being invited back to the CBS show after the NBC ban, and ending up not getting on.

I've read plenty of things of his over the years but don't know titles.

Mark it, folks - Dr Morbz is a BIG STEAMY HYPOCRITE anytime he sneers about adults who read comics being inbred retards.

darling, you know what kind of comics I mean. And do you believe evrything you read?

Perrin memories of knowing HP:

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2010/07/harvey-pekar.html

Harvey Pekar is kind of redundant in a world with blogs
― A B C, Thursday, March 29, 2007 8:52 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

lol what. i'm the worst

Bourdain on Pekar:

http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/read/the-original-goodbye-splendor?fbid=hAQmQnPcni1

Also, the episode he was in will rerun on Monday.

I didn't hear Letterman mention it Monday or Tuesday. Maybe it's been too long since he was a "regular."

In Dave's current live audience of tourists you'd really be fortunate to find one person who knew who the hell Pekar was

It's not impossible that Dave is still pissed off at him.

do you think if Sandra Bernhard got hit by a bus tomorrow, Dave would mention it? NBC era is ancient history, "the kids" aren't interested.

That Bourdain piece is sweet, but he gushes a bit, dontcha think?

No offense to Harvey by saying that, mind you. It's just ever so slightly on the purple side.

i loved the movie. it made me cry. i definitely identified with it in a profound way. i had never read the comix. which is weird cuz i basically read/bought anything even remotely crumb-related for years. i always knew who he was. always saw the books. i read them later though. couldn't get enough. our cancer year was amazing.

Eric Reynolds remembers Pekar.

I doubt the audience on the shows Pekar was on knew who he was beforehand, but I think that underneath the conflict Dave genuinely liked him. I guess you can't memorialize every past guest.

That's great stuff there from Eric. I've known him for about twenty years and I'm not surprised he'd have something thoughtful like that to say.

Excellent thoughts (and following comments) by Jeet Heer.

:-/

http://dorkland.blogspot.com/2010/10/coroner-rules-that-harvey-pekars-death.html

wow, that's kinda scary. i mean, from accidentally mixing the wrong two anti-depressants, jesus

That is scary, I didn't know that mixing two anti-depressants could be fatal.