Harvey Pekar, 1939-2010

Writer Harvey Pekar was found dead at home by his wife on Monday, July 12. Here's the obit from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And here's a nice write-up from comic book scribe Mark Evanier.

Pekar was most famous for his autobiographical comic book American Splendor. He became more well known after his mid-1980's appearances on the David Letterman show. Then the 2003 movie exposed his work to an even wider audience.

I met Harvey at the San Diego comic con back in the mid to late 1980's. He was perfectly nice, he didn't seem to have a whole lot of patience but that was fine. He thrust a postcard promoting back issues of American Splendor into my hands and some photocopies of a New York Times review of the anthology. "Here, here, my publisher gives me this crap, I'm supposed to give it away I guess, take it."

I had him sign the first anthology:





The Pekar Project. A series of web comics authored by Harvey.

The Harvey Heads. Portraits of Harvey Pekar by 90+ different artists.