It's not often that I'm speechless, even less often that I care enough to get choked up but today's passing of writer and underground comic legend Harvey Pekar is just devastating to me. There's no word yet on what the brilliant man passed from but his battles with Cancer were wildly known. I can only hope that he went peacefully, the world is a little darker and a lot less interesting with him gone.
For me personally Perkar was everything I ever wanted to be, one of my true heroes. When I was about 24 or 25 I began to seriously get into R. Crumb and from there I found Harvey. His wit, his style, his entire way of approaching comics was so wonderful, so unabashedly different that it spoke to me instantly. He had no pretensions and even though he worked with pretentious artists the power of his writing held them at bay. I'm a big believer in honesty and few were as honest as Pekar.
I loved the movie American Splendor but it didn't come close to capturing what the comic book truly was. Pekar was the punk rock of comics, he proved you didn't have to know how to draw or even be trained to author comics to write touching, brutally honest and amazing work. I started my small comic press Isolation Disorder Press because of him and not since Johnny Cash have I been so saddened by the loss of a man I didn't know.
RIP Harvey Pekar, you will be missed.
American Splendor was a great film. This is really sad. I've read some stuff he did with Crumb(Crazy Ed) but nothing after that. I'll really have to get into it now. RIP
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