New York Times /Artsbeat "Some Last Bits of Splendor"

Tara Seibel, a Cleveland cartoonist and graphic designer, has a particularly vivid memory of the last time she saw Harvey Pekar.

It was July 11, and she and Mr. Pekar, the writer and “American Splendor” creator, whom she describes as “the godfather of auto-bio comics,” had finished one of their regular afternoon meetings at a neighborhood cafe where they had been working on their latest collaboration. She dropped him off at the public library where he parked his car, then drove herself home. She waited for him to phone her later that night so they could continue their discussion, but Mr. Pekar never called; he was found dead early the next morning by his wife, Joyce Brabner.

Tara Seibel A portion of an essay, presented in comics form, created by Harvey Pekar and Tara Seibel for the “Graphic Details” catalog.

Their collaboration, an illustrated essay that Mr. Pekar and Ms. Seibel wrote together and Ms. Seibel drew, will appear in the catalog for the exhibition “Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women,” which opens at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco on Oct. 1. (A larger version of the essay panel at right can be found here.)

It may be the last comic Mr. Pekar helped write before he died, but it is just one of several works that will be released in the months to come. Stories that he wrote for the Pekar Project — a Web comic that is illustrated in rotating installments by Ms. Seibel, Joseph Remnant, Rick Parker and Sean Pryor — are still to come, as is a 2011 graphic novel, “Cleveland,” that is being illustrated by Mr. Remnant. The Pekar Project, which is hosted by Smith Magazine, is also continuing to accept submissions for its Harvey Heads gallery, for which various artists have drawn Mr. Pekar to celebrate his 70th birthday.

Though Mr. Pekar is often portrayed, even in his own comics, as an endearingly cantankerous and occasionally neurotic person, Ms. Seibel described him in a telephone interview as being cheerful in his final days.

“He just seemed so happy and so upbeat,” said Ms. Seibel, who worked with Mr. Pekar on comics that appeared in Chicago Newcity, The Cleveland Free Times, The Austin Chronicle and The Jewish Review of Books. “I’m not kidding.”

Tara Seibel

Ms. Seibel recalled Mr. Pekar as a fellow workaholic who accompanied her to used-book sales, became friendly with her husband and read stories to her children. (A larger version of the panel at left, depicting Ms. Seibel’s first meeting with Mr. Pekar, can be found here.)

Before Mr. Pekar’s death, she said, she spoke with him about Cleveland’s loss of another local celebrity, LeBron James, who announced on July 8 that he was signing with the Miami Heat. She said she told him that Mr. Remnant wrote on his Facebook page, “It’s O.K., Cleveland, you still have Harvey Pekar.”

“He just lit up,” Ms. Seibel said. “He was so excited about that. I think it really put him in a really good mood right away. He loved praise. He just ate it up. And it was no skin off my back to always pass compliments along to him. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons he liked to work with me.”

Recently, Ms. Seibel said of Mr. Pekar: “He was starting to complain about certain things aching here and there. It was getting harder for him to walk, I noticed. He had said that there was cancer that was back. But he didn’t know what type it was yet, he was waiting to find out.”

“But he was optimistic about it,” she said, adding that she was amazed at how well Mr. Pekar took the news, given how much milder difficulties could sometimes upset him.

“He could be sitting there worried, all rumpled up over $500 and has it come in yet,” Ms. Seibel said, “versus having cancer. I was really surprised at how optimistic he was.”

Still, Ms. Seibel said, she did not expect to lose Mr. Pekar so quickly.

“We thought he was going to be around forever,” she said. “I was expecting to have him around for a lot longer.”

“He didn’t seem, like, real old,” Ms. Seibel added. “He was kind of like a hipster.”