Harvey Pekar, Best of American Splendor (2005)

The title of this volume of American Splendor implies some kind of "best-of" volume to my mind, one that curates the best material from previously published volumes of Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comic. In fact, it's exactly the opposite; this volume seems intended to scoop up all American Splendor stories that had come out since 1991's The New American Splendor Anthology, but had not made their way into 2004's Our Movie Year. If anything in here had been reprinted in a volume I'd read before, I didn't recognize it. This means that the stories reprinted here cover quite a span of time, from 1991 (so before even 1994's Our Cancer Year, which is mentioned in some stories as something Harvey and his wife Joyce are working on) up to 2004, though they mostly seem to be concentrated in the mid- to late 1990s. If you're reading the American Splendor collected editions in publication order (as I mostly am) this has the odd effect that a lot of what's collected here precedes what was reprinted in the previous one, Our Movie Year, which covered 2000 to 2004; I don't think there's a single story in here where the American Splendor film is an actual done deal! In a lot of them, Harvey goes on about how he needs the money from a movie to make up the income he will lose when he retires from his job as a hospital file clerk.

The sequencing within the volume is also weird. In the beginning of the book, there are a couple stories where Harvey references his recent hip surgery; near the end, there are a bunch where he is dealing with his bum hip because he hasn't had the surgery yet. I don't understand why they weren't put into an order  that would read more clearly. There's even a point where there's three back-to-back stories set at San Diego Comic-Con and obviously the one that happens last is placed before the other two. Why?

(Maybe someday a publisher like Fantagraphics will do some kind of definitive reprinting in order? That would be nice, and I would buy it, since most of my American Splendor volumes were borrowed from the library.) 

Best of American Splendor

Collection published: 2005
Contents originally published: 1991-2004
Read: March 2026

Stories by Harvey Pekar [with Colin Warneford and Joyce Brabner*]
Art by Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Joe Sacco, Frank Stack, David Collier, Gerry Shamray, Sam Hurt, Joe Zabel, Gary Dumm, Colin Warneford, Paul Mavrides, Alex Wald, J. R. Stats, Jim Woodring, Carole Sobocinski, Spain [Rodriguez], Scott A. Gilbert

Anyway, how is the actual content?

I think the other reason the sequencing of the book didn't totally work for me is that it begins with some weaker material: stories that are short but not punchy, ones where Pekar recaps the life of someone who did jazz, retellings of things we already know from other Pekar books. At first, I started to worry that the reason some of this material had been uncollected so long was that it wasn't very good! 

The first story to really click for me was almost a hundred pages in, "TransAtlantic Comics" (illustrated by Frank Stack) where Harvey has a bad encounter in a parking lot that causes him to freak out, but then in the middle of his bad weekend he receives a package from England, containing the work of an autistic autobiographical cartoonist named Colin Warneford, whose comic is included in the narrative. You can definitely tell how Colin is influenced by Pekar and his artistic collaborators, but his story does a good job of illuminating his own worldview and is actually kind of moving. (It doesn't seem like Warneford has ever published any other work, alas.) Then we go back to Harvey's bad weekend.

I like that they changed the name of the book to American Splendour for this issue, though it did momentarily make me freak out that I'd been misspelling the name of the comic for years before I figured out what was going on.
from American Splendour: Transatlantic Comics (script & art by Colin Warneford)

After this, I felt the book picked up and became more consistent, nailing that telling of quotidian stories through the comics medium that Pekar is so good at. I liked "Veterans' Rights" (illustrated by Stack), which is all the kind of turf-war bullshit familiar to anyone who works in a large bureaucratic organization: different people squabbling over who will do what when. I also liked "Flight to Chicago" (art by Joe Zabel and Gary Dumm), about the tribulations of trying to fly from Cleveland to Chicago when you have a bad hip, and "Windfall Gained" (art by Stack), where Harvey gets in a minor traffic accident, but actually ends up coming out ahead financially when he finds a guy willing the do the work incredibly cheaply. Harvey is a guy with a lot of neuroses, and I appreciate how much he's willing to demonstrate these to the reader; "Candor" (art by Joe Sacco) is all about an incredibly overcomplicated freakout he has over thinking he lost something he didn't actually lose, which ultimately results in him locking himself out of the house at 6am for an hour in pouring down rain.

I love how this captures the anger of the crowd.
from American Splendor: Windfall #1 (script by Harvey Pekar, art by Joe Zabel & Gary Dumm)

from American Splendor: Windfall #1
(script by Harvey Pekar, art by Josh '95)

As I said earlier, there are a number of stories about Harvey's hip; "A Decision" (art by Josh Neufeld) caps that whole run off with a tale of how he finally makes the decision to get it replaced. It has a good moment of indignation that I found very funny. I also liked the sequel-of-sorts to "Windfall Gained," "Windfall Lost" (art by Stack), which has a funny bit where when Harvey shares his driver's license with someone he hit in an accident, the guy immediately goes, "You gonna write a story about this?" Again, this one really shows of Harvey's almost neurotic nature, plus his cheapness, to good effect.

All three Comic-Con stories are quite strong; two are a type of American Splendor story Pekar does from time to time, where he tells you someone else's story. In this case, it's about a guy who became a phone salesman... but was almost too good at it and began losing himself in it. (He quit to become a cartoonist, hence Harvey bumping into him at Comic-Con.) There's also a funny one where Harvey meets Matt Groening: "See, I noticed a list of yours in a magazine of the 100 greatest people, and I was only number ninety-six on it. You meet a few more people that impress ya, and I'll fall completely off it. So I was trying t'impress ya, to at least solidify my position, and maybe move a few notches up." He then threatens to take out Lynda Barry:

I'm guessing Lynda Barry ultimately won.
from American Splendor: Comic-Con Comics (script by Harvey Pekar, art by Scott A. Gilbert)

(A cameo I did not expect: Mike Richardson, who I know as the writer of Star Wars: Crimson Empire, but who was the publisher of Dark Horse, who published American Splendor in the 1990s and 2000s.) 

It would be easy to see Harvey as a crank, and that's often how he depicts himself, but one of my favorite stories here shows off his empathetic side. "Interviewing the Interviewer" (art by Stack) is about Pekar being interviewed by a reporter, but then he keeps calling her up because he wants to know how she's doing. It's simple but effective. There's even a story by Harvey's wife Joyce here, "Be Careful Not to Pull Too Hard on Loose Ends" (art by Neufeld), about the writing of Our Cancer Year, and Joyce's own neuroses about the possible return of the cancer. I liked this one a lot too.

I was into this lady's story enough that I actually googled her a bit to see if I could figure out what happened to her in the twenty-five years since this came out.
from American Splendor: Bedtime Stories (script by Harvey Pekar, art by Frank Stack)

It's been around three years since I read my previous American Splendor volume; hopefully it's less than three years before I get to my next one. I have only two to go! 

Next up in sequence: American Splendor: Another Day

* They are both credited on the individual stories they write but not the collection's title page. 

American Splendor: Our Movie Year by Harvey Pekar et al.

American Splendor: Our Movie Year

Collection published: 2004
Contents originally published: 2000-04
Read: May 2023

Stories: Harvey Pekar

Art: R. Crumb, Gary Dumm, Mark Zingarelli, Josh Neufeld, Gerry Shamray, G. Budgett, Frank Stack, Ed Piskor, Joe Zabel, Dean Haspiel

American Splendor is, of course, the comic book about the life of Harvey Pekar in all its humdrum glory, usually told in the form of short observational stories. Every once in a while, I pick up an American Splendor book I haven't already read; this time around, that brought me to Our Movie Year, which collects a number of stories that depicted what happened in Pekar's life when the 2003 film came out, or were written around that time, or came about as a consequence of the film. As is frustratingly normal for an American Splendor collection, there's no contextual material: when and where did these stories originally appear? you will just have to infer it.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, more than most American Splendor collections. Part of the issue is that much of the material is redundant: I think there are three different accounts of how the movie got made. Each originally appeared in a different venue, I believe, but put them all in the same book and you get the same story three different times. Some other stories re-tell the story of American Splendor itself. Again, useful if Pekar's debuting in some new venue, but longtime readers don't need to be reretetold the story of how he met R. Crumb.

This panel cracks me up, because it makes Harvey look like he's threatening the guy and making him uncomfortable when he gives him a compliment.
original publication unknown* (art by Ed Piskor)

 
Pekar is at his best when he's hyper-detailed, when he's (for example) spending thirteen pages telling the story of how he waited for a jump outside the movie theater when his car died, or thirteen pages about him fretting about missing a flight back home to Cleveland so he can check his mail. These stories and similar ones were my favorites.

Harvey Pekar: able to make much out of little.
original publication unknown* (art by Gerry Shamray)

On the other hand, some of these stories cover a lot of ground; eighteen pages for the entire making of the movie is not a lot, and I found myself wishing he'd decompressed some of those scenes more, giving us more of the curious but everyday neuroses of being Harvey Pekar, even when meeting a film producer or Paul Giamatti or whatever, but alas, there's little of that here. One does notice his continual interest in everything financial; both stories about his trip to Sundance make sure to note that the condo was well-stocked with food, while throughout he's worried what will happen now that he's retired once his money from new writing opportunities spurred by the release of the film dry up. If you want to know how the film affected Pekar personally, that's clearly it: it's a way for him to hopefully get more professional opportunities when he really needs them, little more.

Harvey Pekar: can never enjoy a good thing.
from Sundance Film Festival Daily Insider (art by Mark Zingarelli)

There was a run of "stories" where it's Pekar cramming facts about some musical act into 1-2 pages; sorry, but even you can't make me care about jazz, Harvey. I was a bit surprised to learn that even before Ego & Hubris, he was telling stories of Michael Malice.

TLDR.
from Gambit Weekly (art by Gary Dumm)

As is often the case by now, his artistic collaborators are well chosen. There's a fun reunion with R. Crumb, and I particularly like Gerry Shamray's work in this one, though we also have a lot of solid contributions from Gary Dumm.

Next up in sequence: Best of American Splendor

* Possible this book was their original publication. Who knows?

Review: American Splendor: Unsung Hero by Harvey Pekar and David Collier

Comic trade paperback, 79 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 2002) 
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2017

Harvey Pekar's American Splendor: Unsung Hero: The Story of Robert McNeill

Writer: Harvey Pekar

Artist: David Collier

Later, Pekar would write Ego & Hubris, but I think this was his first extended non-autobiographical biographical comic. It covers the Vietnam wartime experiences of Robert McNeill, apparently a coworker of Perkar's judging by the (extremely light) frame sequences. The title seems inappropriate: this is a story about how Vietnam was not a place for heroes or heroism, but just dudes getting by in often terrible ways. The thing McNeill got a medal for turns out to be instigated by his attempt to avoid assigned duties. It's in that grittiness of war that this book really shines. McNeill isn't a good person, he's just a person, with all that entails, and Pekar presents his tale in his characteristically non-judgmental style. I found the discussion of race in the United States military during the war the most interesting part of the book, an aspect I knew little-to-nothing about prior to reading the book.

Review: American Splendor presents Bob & Harv's Comics by Harvey Pekar & R. Crumb

I embark on Series Four of Big Finish's Fourth Doctor Adventures with The Darkness of Glass over at Unreality SF. What's that, you say? I've skipped Nick Briggs's series opener? Surely not. Why would I do that?

Comic hardcover, 86 pages
Published 1996 (contents: 1976-88) 
Borrowed from the library
Read October 2015

American Splendor presents Bob & Harv's Comics

Stories by Harvey Pekar

Art by R. Crumb

It's been a long time since I've read a volume of American Splendor, longer than I would've liked, and if I'd known better, I wouldn't have read this one. Not that it's bad-- far from it-- but it mostly, if not entirely collects comics I've already read. (There were a couple I didn't recognize, but that might just be because I forgot them.) This dips through the entire American Splendor series to pick up the ones illustrated by R. Crumb, thus reprinting comics that already appeared in American Splendor and More American Splendor and The New American Splendor.

That said, it's nice to see Pekar and Crumb at the top of their game: this set includes classics like "The Harvey Pekar Name Story" (four pages of Pekar just telling you about his name), "Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines" (exactly what it sounds like), "Freddy Visits for the Weekend" (Pekar is visited by a friend trying to scam meals off him), and "American Splendor Assaults the Media" (Pekar is asked by a magazine to submit writing and they don't print it, resulting in three-page screed). It struck me that there was much less, well, serious content in these stories: Pekar can really dig into the emotions and tribulations of his private life sometimes, but there's little of that here, no stories about Pekar's sickness or his romantic relationships.

Rather, his collaborations with Crumb focus on the encounters Pekar has with various strange characters that populate his life, especially the staff of the VA hospital where Pekar works as a file clerk. There are a lot of two- or one- or even half-page tales here, quick encounters with people dispensing weird life advice, or being rude, or selling pickled okra, or whatever. As always, Pekar's eye for the everyday and Crumb's deliberately shabby art conspire to make these fun little gems of an ordinary life well observed.

There's also a pair of forewords, one by Pekar about Crumb, and one by Crumb about Pekar. I don't think I've read them before, so they were nice to read.

Review: The New American Splendor Anthology by Harvey Pekar

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 1991 (content: 1974-91)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2014

The New American Splendor Anthology
by Harvey Pekar
art by Robert Armstrong, Alison Bechdel, Chester Brown, Kevin Brown, Gregory Budgett, R. Crumb, Gary Dumm with Laura Darnell Dumm, William Fogg, Drew Friedman, Rebecca Huntington, Bill Knapp, Paul Mavrides, Val Mayerik, Alan Moore, Willy Murphy, Spain Rodriguez, Gerry Shamray, Carole Sobocinksi, Frank Stack, J. R. Stats, Colin Upton, Ed Wesolowski, Jim Woodring, Joe Zabel, and Mark Zingarelli

The short story, I think, is Pekar's element-- aside from The Quitter, his long-form work has failed to interest me as much his shorts. The New American Splendor Anthology collects a wide range of his material, from his earliest comics work to his then-latest, though mostly it collects issues of American Splendor that came out after More American Splendor, I think. There's perhaps some stuff here that's not great, but that's okay, 'cause it's always over with right away, and Pekar is spinning you a new yarn in his distinctive voice: buying food at West Side Market, going to comic book signings (including a cameo by Ed Brubaker!), being obsessive about losing something or forgetting something, picking his wife up from the airport, or driving from Washington, D.C., to Cleveland overnight. I empathize with his small obsessions that he tries to clamp under control, and his occasional irrational inflexibility.

This collection also includes writeups of many of Pekar's appearances on Letterman's Late Night. I don't think Pekar is as clever as he thinks he is, but I think he knows that. (I love the one where he tries to get free stuff off the Late Night producer and ends up with a couple crackers.)

Alison Bechdel and Alan Moore draw stories in this one. Seriously: Alan Moore! For some reason Bechdel is one of five artists whose name is left off the cover, and distressingly, there is no credit to the artists on the title page, just Pekar. (Also no good publication data.) By this point, Pekar has gotten good as selecting artists who work well with his style of writing: I imagine that drawing normalcy is more difficult than it looks, and these guys do a great job on the whole, especially Joe Zabel & Gary Dumm and Bill Knapp.

Review: Harvey Pekar's Cleveland

Comic hardcover, 120 pages
Published 2012
Borrowed from Hayley
Read April 2013

Harvey Pekar's Cleveland
by Harvey Pekar
illustrated by Joseph Remnant

One might wish that this history was a little more Cleveland and a little less Pekar-- the autobiographical details will often be familiar to anyone who's read previous Pekar works. But then I supposed it wouldn't be a Pekar book. I'm not from Cleveland, but my wife is, and I am from Cincinnati, so I enjoyed this take on the city's history. Pekar's affection for his oft-mocked home city really shines through, and it's a good (if slight) read.

From Off the Streets of New York Comes...

Comic hardcover, 152 pages
Published 2006
Borrowed from a friend
Read June 2012

American Splendor: Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story

Story: Harvey Pekar

Art: Gary Dumm

Another full-length work from Pekar, Ego & Hubris tells the story of Michael Malice, who co-created Overheard in New York and co-wrote some wrestler's autobiography.  Malice is a guy who is smart, but thinks he's a genius. If he really was a genius, though, he'd figure out that part of the social contract is being nice to other people.  Pekar and Dumm tell his story in an entertaining enough fashion; Malice swings back and forth between sympathetic and flabbergasting.

Before the Streets of Cleveland Comes...

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2005
Borrowed from a friend
Read June 2012

The Quitter

Writer: Harvey Pekar

Artist: Dean Haspiel

Gray Tones: Lee Loughridge
Letters: Pat Brosseau

The Quitter covers Harvey Pekar's childhood growing up in Cleveland. Some of this material was previously covered in American Splendor, but not much of it; that tended to focus on Harvey's later life, which only comes in at the very end here.  What can I say about it beyond that it might be my favorite Pekar comic yet?  He fills in his life in broad sketches, focusing into specific moments only a couple times, but this story really resonated with me-- as indeed, I suspect it would with anyone who's ever tried to do something and ended up giving up because it was hard. Or maybe just because of stupid reasons. The Quitter details Pekar's attempts to find something he won't give up at.

Pekar's short works resist "messages," but The Quitter has one, sort of, even if it's just that someday you might find something where you don't quit. Barely a message, but it's somehow uplifting, and I found myself feeling better about myself after finishing The Quitter, and I don't often like books that overtly try to do that to me.

Dean Haspiel might just be my favorite artistic collaborator for Pekar so far; his work is cartoony, but gritty, which suits Pekar's "neo-realist" style more so than some of the more realistic art I've seen in American Splendor, which tends to be too stiff to work as good comics.  Lee Loughridge-- who I know as Gotham Central's fabulous colorist-- accentuates the whole thing with good use of "gray tones."

Surely one of the better graphic memoirs I've ever read (and at this point, I've read too many!).

From Off the Streets of Cleveland Comes...

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 1994
Borrowed from a friend
Read June 2012

Our Cancer Year
by Joyce Brabner and Harvey Pekar
art by Frank Stack

My previous experience with Harvey Pekar is just the first two American Splendor compilations and the film, which actually covered some of this narrative in much abbreviated form. This book tells of Harvey's bout with cancer-- or more accurately, his bout with chemotherapy to make sure that cancer doesn't come back.

The most immediately notable thing about Our Cancer Year is that, since it is written by both Harvey and his wife Joyce, it is not told from a first-person perspective but rather the third.  Given that so much of American Splendor's effect depends on Harvey's distinctive voice, this creates an immediate distance. This is exacerbated by the fact it seems like Joyce did more of the writing than Harvey; we get into her head more than his, and though what goes on in her head is okay, the book's standout sequences are those where we really get into Harvey's experiences. 

We also hear a lot about a group of refugee kids that Joyce is working with and the outbreak of the Gulf War, which is not as interesting as the amount of narrative it takes up would indicate. It might make an interesting independent book, but crammed into here, the kids don't get enough coverage to pop as characters, and so they feel intrusive.

Stack's sketchy artwork is the first time where I feel like one of Pekar's artistic collaborators have let him down.  It's okay, but it's sometimes hard to tell what's actually happening-- or even who someone actually is.

These are all complaints, and Our Cancer Year's not as bad as all this might imply.  But American Splendor had done better before and would do better again; given the immensity of its subject, it's an unfortunate blip.

From Off the Streets of Cleveland Comes...

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2003 (contents: 1976-87)
Acquired January 2012
Read February 2012

American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar
and More American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar

Stories: Harvey Pekar with Joyce Brabner

Art: R. Crumb, Kevin Brown, Gregory Budgett, Gary Dumm, Gerry Shamray, Sean Carroll, Sue Cavey, Val Malyerik

As far as I can tell, this shouldn't have worked. American Splendor isn't ever about anything, or rather it's about everything, with Harvey Pekar just picking moments in his life that he finds vaguely interesting. Or not even that.

Many of Pekar's stories are almost anti-comic in the amount of narration that Pekar provides to go with the art. There's no word/image hybridity here; without the narration, the pictures would just be isolated fragments, and it would be nearly impossible to deduce the stories. In the story "American Splendor Assaults the Media," there's so much text that there's barely room for images in the panels-- and the images are just Harvey Pekar as he tells you about the events. With little-to-no-alteration, it could be a straight text piece.

But somehow, American Splendor is utterly comics. I'm not sure why the pictures are there sometimes, but if they weren't, you'd have something very different. The stories might be dominated by Pekar's voice (so much so that sometimes who the artist is seems irrelevant), but the art does a lot to give it that voice. The first story in the book, "The Harvey Pekar Name Story," is the clearest demonstration of that. This story is just four pages of headshots-- the incidents the story describes never appear on-panel-- meaning that the illustrations are used to convey Pekar's body language as he "tells" the story. Though the narrative communicated would be same if Pekar had simply typed up the story as straight prose, the comic form gives it a sense of timing and humor. I actually once did an experiment where I gave the story as prose to my class and then as a comic, and all of them reported enjoying it much more as a comic. I myself liked American Splendor a lot, and I think I would have found it unsatisfying in any medium other than comics, so clearly Pekar is doing something right.

(My favorite story, by the way, was the one about Harvey's relationship with the guy he would bum rides off of, but refused to do any favors for in return.)