Though this is old news to some of you, I was saddened to learn of
Harvey Pekar's death yesterday. He was a groundbreaking comics writer, bringing the everyday schmoo to comics. No superheroes, no bigger than life characters, just his life as a filing clerk in a hospital in Cleveland. He most famously worked with R. Crumb and many other artists, and can be credited as one of the earliest examples of autobiographical comics (which can be a good or bad thing depending on how annoying the
subject is). His story was also made into a fantastic
film, starring Paul Giamatti (as Harvey) and Hope Davis (as his wife, Joyce Brabner).
Here's to artistic schlubs everywhere! Raise your glasses to a guy who didn't often catch good breaks but let us enjoy his failures and fears.
Oh, and I just found out that
George Steinbrenner died today. He owned the NY Yankees and he will probably be remembered by more people. Yet, he did much less than Harvey.
Here's to artistic schlubs everywhere! Raise your glasses to a guy who didn't often catch good breaks but let us enjoy his failures and fears.
3 comments:
Yay, Harvey! I was touched that my grad students who took the performance/visual narrative course and read comics and saw American Splendour were all passing around the news on Facebook and saying how sad it made them.
Poor Joyce.
Glad to see you back to blogging, even for bad news. We all miss you so much! It's hard to have you so much further away, so I can't just jump in the car and drive to see you.
:-(
Miss you too. I hope that I will be more active online, but we'll see once the semester starts. Stay cool (like I know you will).
Tuli Kupferberg of the Fuggs also died. It is him that I will miss the most.
All the old cranks are dying off!!
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