"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...

Robert Crumb

This scene of Haight-Ashbury where Robert and Dana famously sold comix (ZAP) out of a
baby carriage is going to be re-printed in T.A.P. #1.

When he turned eighteen, Crumb left home and moved to Cleveland, where he shared an apartment in Cleveland with Marty Phals. He got a job at American Greeting cards and married his first real girlfriend. Crumb was soon feeling trapped in both his job and his marriage. He began taking LSD "as a sort of substitute for committing suicide." It did not bring Crumb freedom, but it might have contributed to his fame. Crumb had a "fuzzy" acid experience in November of 1965 and the aftereffects left him not only "crazy and helpless for six months," but also obsessively productive. By early 1966 he filled sketchbooks with drawings of what would become his most famous characters - Mr. Natural, Devil Girl, Angelfood McSpade, Eggs Ackley, and even the keep on truckin' guys.
January 1967, with just the clothes on his back and not even leaving a note for wife Dana, Crumb "set out for the new mecca" of San Francisco with a couple of acquaintances. Crumb was drawn to the sense of total freedom that emanated from Haight-Ashbury, and he was fascinated by the hippie subculture, but he never felt comfortable around the flower children. In his long sleeve dress shirts and occasional jacket and hat, he was self conscious about how different he looked and even imagined they suspected him of being a narc, but he was not willing to "embrace that scene." Even though he would sometimes refer to the Haight-Ashbury crowd as "my people," he was painfully aware of being an outsider. Crumb describes himself as a painfully shy weirdo during that period. He seldom spoke around people he had not known for a while. Second wife, Aline, says "the only voice he had was his pen."





"Robert began his book publishing career with a wonderfully romantic full-color illustrated novel entitled the ‘Yum Yum Book’."

Before much time had passed Robert’s libido was freed to such an extent that he immersed himself further into his sexual fantasies, which had been tremendously influenced (and corrupted) by his early years of oppressive Catholic upbringing. Much of his later comix work clearly could be considered anti-female in the extreme. Yet there is no doubt that he is a gifted artist and immensely productive to this day.”

Jazz Opera "Leave Me Alone" by Dan Plonsey & Harvey Pekar

Poster illustrated by Pekar Project artist Joseph Remnant. He's also illustrating the Cleveland
graphic novel, One of Harvey's last works in book form. Dig his neo-crumbesque style.



Harvey wrote the Libretto for this performance held at Oberlin College January 2009.
I thought the set design, songs, music and lighting were superb in capturing Pekar's
essence. From what I've known of him and coming over to his house, that's all he had was a
sofa in the middle of his living room in front of a fireplace joined with a coffee table loaded with books and papers. He even had a trash can in the middle of the room for all of the fan mail envelopes he needed to throw away. Various bookshelves and built-ins of more books and records with random unframed posters and art dotted on the stark white walls. It felt more like a bohemian bachelor's pad than a living room.

"No Reservations" Written by Harvey Pekar Illustrated by Tara Seibel

This story was published on SMITHmag.net but has been removed for some unknown reason. It's totally bogus, but NO WORRIES! We hope you enjoy it here at The Alternative Project
{T.A.P. Comix}

This Rock City—Terminally Ill comic story is also getting published in an underground mini comic
{T.A.P. Comix#1}. Along with the limited edition Rock City—Terminally Ill Comic mini Harvey and I put together in 2009. A paypal is being set up for future purchase.

Lake View Cemetery

(Ironically, where Harvey Pekar will be buried and the first comic I wrote.)
From Thecomicsbeat.com "Word has reached us that while a formal memorial service will be announced at a future date, Harvey Pekar will be buried at Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, in a place of honor next to the grave of Eliot Ness, the famed FBI agent, and another proud son of Cleveland. When Harvey’s future wife, Joyce Brabner, was introduced as a character in the book, she was seen in Lakeview Cemetery.