" Da Vinci For Dummies" Harvey Pekar & Tara Seibel

"Plague of the Phone Hustlers" Harvey Pekar & Tara Seibel

Anna-Liza & Steve Suehiro-Harvey Pekar Tribute & The Deep Funk

Anna-Liza on her connection to Pekar :

Steve had heard about Harvey’s comics back in college. I was into comics as a kid, but it was mostly DC, Marvel, and Image stuff. I loved the combination of a well-drawn piece and a good story, but I wasn’t satisfied with most of the stories that were out there so I out grew those comics. I still had a passion for the art though, and I even drew the covers of my favorite comics which, at that time, were X-men and The Maxx. I think it was back in 2005 when I first heard about Harvey. We were at our local video/dvd rental place, and Steven picked up a copy of American Splendor. I absolutely loved the movie for its portrayal of a seemingly ordinary person going about his life. I knew then that this movie was a keeper so we bought ourselves a copy and added it to our permanent collection. Steven even bought copies of his graphic novels. I grew to like his writing style. It was just a guy making observations of the world around him, and perhaps those observations were what made him what he was. He was a thinker, a writer, a critic, a promoter, all those other roles that we play as humans, but most importantly he was just a guy who had ideas and he overcame whatever obstacles that came at him to make those ideas into reality. When I heard of his passing, I felt devastated. It felt as if the idea of the “American Dream” died with him. Dreams are what gives us hope. If hope withers away, where would we be? I think that is why I was inspired to create the Harvey Pekar Tribute page. I even drew Harvey’s profile so that I can use it as the FB profile pic. My intention was to provide a place that people can visit to honor the memory of Harvey, encourage others to stick to their dreams and not give up hope, and to enjoy some jazz music along the way.

Steve on his connection to Pekar :

I was first introduced to Harvey Pekar and his American Splendor comics in the late ‘80s by one of my dorm buddies in college who let me check out a few editions of American Splendor in return for allowing him to borrow a couple of Hunter S. Thompson hardcovers I had in my room. Though I had always been a fan of comic books – Batman, Iron Man, and later the adult-oriented pieces from Heavy Metal Magazine- I had never read anything like American Splendor before and I found the stories about “Our Man Herschel” to be amusing. Here were stories of this funny looking guy – rendered by R. Crumb, an artist whose work I had been exposed to before by my uncle who was a bit of a hippie. My friend soon returned the books he had borrowed and I handed back his issues of American Splendor. Admittedly, I soon forgot about the comics that I had read, my mind instead filled with classes, dating and work.

I did flash back a few times to what I had seen in American Splendor, the first occasion when I was working a random part time job at a local department store as a dressing room attendant. It was my job to take, refold and rehang clothing from the dressing rooms and needless to say it was a mind-numbingly repetitive and extremely boring gig. One day, in the middle of what seemed to be an endless shift, I found myself imagining what the customers would look like if they were drawn by R. Crumb and were characters in a comic strip of my life just like Harvey’s in American Splendor. I recall that I thought at the time that however mundane Harvey’s job was in his comics, my job was way too boring and useless to make a good setting for a comic strip.

Not too long after that incident, I was up late one night not really paying much attention to my studies while I had the TV turned to the David Letterman Show with the sound off. One of Letterman’s guests was a amusing but somewhat familiar looking guy who appeared to be taking some heat from Letterman. I turned up the sound and caught a mention of the comic “American Splendor” and suddenly realized that the funny looking guy was Harvey Pekar.

I would not think of Harvey Pekar or his comics until many years later when in 2003 I caught wind of the American Splendor movie which had just been released. I was married by then, and I recall mentioning to my wife, Anna Liza that we should see that film on our “date night” but for one reason or other we never got around to it and soon the movie was out of the theaters. It was not until 2005 when I spotted the American Splendor DVD at my video store that my wife and I would finally get a chance to see this movie. Needless to say, we both immediately fell in love with Harvey Pekar and soon purchased our own DVD of the film for our collection. Soon, we picked up copies of a few American Splendor paperback compilations at the store and added those to our home library.

There was a lot that we liked about Harvey Pekar’s tales of his daily life and as a young and underpaid couple struggling to make ends meet there was a lot in Harvey’s comics with which we could directly relate. We were jazz fans and we enjoyed reading his pieces about jazz. He was a simple guy and we thought of ourselves as simple people too. He was nothing short of a brilliant thinker and his sense of humor and genius in his obversations of daily life was uniquely appealing. Having lost my grandfather to cancer in 2004, I found Harvey’s story about his struggle with cancer to be touching and inspiring.

One night, we saw that Anthony Bordain’s “No Reservations” show was featuring the town of Cleveland, Ohio where Harvey was from. We watched it for the hell of it when suddenly there he was on the screen- Harvey talking with Bordain, meeting up with Toby Radloff in a trippy jacket, showing off his town. We recorded the piece and watched it over and over again.

Flash forward to July 2010: I was at work - now as a funeral director – when I saw a piece on Yahoo news announcing that Harvey Pekar had been found dead in his home in Cleveland. My heart immediately sank and I went outside to call my wife to tell her the bad news. Throughout the rest of the day I felt as if I had lost a relative or a close friend even if I had never actually met Harvey. I realized that his death touched me on a deep and personal level that I had thought my position as a funeral director had made me immune from ever feeling to this degree.

That evening at home, Anna Liza and I were lost in a deep funk of sadness and began searching the internet for further news about Harvey. Having recently opened an account on Facebook, we searched for a memorial page about Harvey and were surprised that we could not locate one. With all the crap that people post on Facebook, we found it bordering on disrespectful that there wasn't a mention of Harvey’s passing. I remember Anna Liza saying “It’s like the idea of the American Dream died along with Harvey” and I could only agree. It was at that moment that Anna Liza decided to memorialize the death of Harvey Pekar with a tribute page where we could share our sadness with other Harvey Pekar fans.

The Harvey Pekar Tribute page on facebook is now in it’s second year and has managed to attract a small but loyal number of fans, some of whom have shared that they discovered Our Man’s work via links to our page that were shared with them. We have met Harvey Pekar fans from all over the world who have posted their thoughts and links to other Pekar related pages. We have also had the distinct honor of corresponding with a number of people who personally knew Harvey Pekar, and among our fans are several talented artists who worked with Harvey when he was alive. Rick Parker, the guy behind “Spiderman” and “Bevis and Butthead” once wrote to me that he believed that “Harvey will not be forgotten in our lifetime…I think his fame will only grow” a statement which I believe wholeheartedly to be true. We will continue to keep the Harvey Pekar Tribute page active in the sincerest hope that we can do what we can to have a small role in keeping Our Man’s memory alive.

One way of keeping him alive is click over here : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Harvey-Pekar-Tribute/144279005587670

Drew University Comics panel : and a note from a friend

7/12/10

"Dear Tara, OK, seriously, I already had it on the to-do list to read these interviews with you before you sent this message. And then I JUST saw what happened to Harvey today. I'm so sorry to hear the news. He sounds like he was an amazing guy and someone who influenced you greatly for the better...and people like that just don't come along that often in our lives."

The note above comes from a friend from high school. Someone I looked up to because this person was/is incredibly intelligent and had amazing people skills. He ended up becoming a journalist and I wonder if I wasn't influenced by him in some ways. The message he sent me the day Harvey died (along with tons of other heartfelt notes I received) this was very simple but incredibly true. It made me feel a little better when I

didn't think anything could. Every person we pick to be in our lives is significant. From High school friends to adulthood guru's. Pick the people in your life carefully, because it becomes meaningful.

"American Splendead" by Rick Parker

A couple years ago, accomplished cartoonist Rick Parker created this jollification of a spoof when we were all working on the Pekar Project together. I remember Harvey got a kick out of it along with everyone else. Last year seemed too soon to post, but I think it feels ok to dust if off again. I think Harvey would want us all to have fun and think of fond memories. The Pekar Project was a great outlet for him. Jeff Newelt was the editor and it was published on SMITH. I believe its still there, www.smithmag.com/pekarproject although Harvey and I are no longer working on it. Rick Parker, Sean Pryor and Joseph Remnant are the other artists on the project. Everyone on the project came in to Cleveland for Harvey's 70th birthday. We celebrated at a gallery opening loaded with Harvey comics and paintings covering the gallery walls. Thanks to Pennello Gallery down in Little Italy. Coincidently, I had a studio down the street from the gallery. Harvey would come over periodically and nose through second-hand art books and sometimes we'd sit down stairs at the bakery below and eat cream puffs as we watched people walk by. He'd tell me stories about what the neighborhood used to be like back in the day. I guess there was quite a bit of racial tension. He said he witnessed a lot of black people get beat up. Thank goodness it's mellowed out significantly. Its' very much an eclectic mix of case students, young professionals and gangsters now. Those were the days, and not to be stuck in the past, but it was pretty amazing to sit and talk for hours with an innovator who's dials were constantly turning.

"Meeting Harvey Pekar" by Rick Brown

I was attending the Ohioanna Book Festival in the spring of 2008, mostly to talk to Pulitzer Prize winning Plain Dealer columnist and author Connie Schultz. I also had the hopes of meeting her husband, recently elected Senator Sherrod Brown. And I did just that. But to my surprise, I later had the good fortune to be introduced to another famous Clevelander, Harvey Pekar.

Naked Sunfish “Onion City” cartoonist Sue Olcott was lucky enough to interview Mr. Pekar that day. She introduced me and we spoke very briefly. The hectic pace of the book festival made it impossible to talk for long. Yet I came away satisfied knowing I would be able to publish an interview in the very near future.

Ms. Olcott later gave me Harvey’s phone number and encouraged me to call him. I’m not one who enjoys talking on the phone. And to be honest I was never a comic book aficionado, even as a boy. I learned of Harvey mostly through the success of American Splendor, a cinematic biographical account of his life. Consequently, I was a bit nervous about speaking with Harvey. But Sue insisted and I finally did contact him.

At first our conversation was somewhat clumsy, in a West Side guy talking to an East Side guy, Clevelander sort of way. Anyone from the area knows what I mean. I wasn’t quite sure what to say, making it difficult for Mr. Pekar to understand what it was I wanted from him. But after I told him I was the editor of an electronic magazine in search of another comic strip, we both loosened up. Harvey immediately began telling me about his current project with a talented young artist named Tara Seibel. He gave me her number and told me to call.

Harvey and Tara contributed the wonderful “Rock City-Terminally Ill" comic to Naked Sunfish for over a year following that. It was a great companion piece to “Onion City” and gave the website a real Northern Ohio flavor. And while Tara and I have never met in person, we have become friends and colleagues.

I suppose I cannot say that Harvey Pekar’s writing directly influenced me, at least not initially and not in a literary way. Harvey’s deflecting my attention from himself to Ms. Seibel struck me. Having grown up outside Cleveland I immediately recognized the loyalty he had for her and their collaboration. Clevelanders tend to be loyal, sometimes to a fault. (Look at their sports teams’ fans) I have since realized that Mr. Pekar’s influence on me, and many others, was his fixation with the mundane.

After becoming more familiar with Harvey’s work, I have come to see many similarities in our outlook on life. I write about everyday occurrences. I even have a series of one act plays called “The Non-Fiction Theater for the Truly Mundane”. And Harvey saw the essence of living in the day to day: a person’s job, a loyalty to community, frustrations, a person’s fight with cancer. And while I am mostly a humorist, I am proud I share Harvey Pekar’s eye for redundancy, the brave struggle of getting up every morning and living that day. His sarcasm and wit were amazing. It got him in trouble. I can relate.

The inspiration I can draw from Harvey is that he saw the wonder in everyday events. He knew the mystery of boring tasks, the commonality of it all, and the sameness as difference, like the beautiful bickering emanating from an old married couple still in love. I believe Mr. Pekar saw all this and yet was never trite in his art, only the genuine thing, and the real deal.

Thanks Harvey.

Rick Brown

Editor and Head Writer – www.nakedsunfish.com

Author – Naked Sunfish – Best Bites

Meeting Robert Crumb

What a sweet man. So compassionate, so knowledgable, so hip. I got to hang out with him for a day in San Francisco. We got to pow-wow over our mutual friend the late great Harvey Pekar. So many laughs a few tears. I couldn't believe that he did not know that Harvey credited him for his career taking off. I said to Robert, didn't you at least see the movie American Splendor? Didn't you see the scene where you and Harvey are sitting at the restaurant eating french fries and he shows you his script and you chuckle to yourself about it while you pull out your rapidograph. Then ask him if you can take the script home to illustrate? He said, "Yeah, but I just thought they made up that scene so they could fit me somewhere in the time line." WHAT????? I couldn't believe my ears. I said, I can't believe this? I guess it doesn't matter how famous the artist got, he still remains

somewhat insecure. I told him that Harvey constantly referenced him as "his big break" in the business. Crumb said, "ahh man, I think I'm gonna cry." I felt like some kind of weird underground comix fairy that was floating back and forth passing verbal notes to underground comix legends. One on earth and one in the afterlife. That's just one tiny little story. I'll tell you one more, and then I gotta change a diaper. I said to him while walking across Valencia street, well, nobody can say that you and Harvey didn't deserve your recognition. You guys were some of the hardest working guys in the business. He said to me. "Nobody deserves anything in life." Whoooa.. I was so blown away by that statement. Harvey used to say something similiar.. "It's a total crock of shit the whole fucking thing." he would say. Crumb said to me, "There's billions of artists who put their billions of hours in, and they never got recognized. " Amen brother, nobody deserves anything... more Crumb stories later...