Writer Harvey Pekar has been a cult figure in underground comic books since the 1970s when he started his semi-autobiographical series \American Splendor."" He has covered such personal moments as his battle with cancer and intimate family relationships in the pages of his comic, and his life's work was recently filmed as the movie ""American Splendor."" He recently spoke with The Daily Cardinal about his motivations and the present state of the industry.
The Daily Cardinal: It's certainly nothing new to have multiple writers and artists on one project, but your content is so personal and intimate. Do you look for something in an artist that helps you portray that?
Harvey Pekar: Yeah, if I have a choice. There have been times when I haven't had much choice-I either worked with the guy right in front of me or I didn't work with anybody. I had started doing comics in 1972. Crumb liked my work and started to illustrate it, which was a fantastic break for me. To get started with a guy like that gave me instant legitimacy. It was like ""Wow, Crumb illustrates this guy's work, how bad can he be?"" So I got some other comic-book illustrators interested in my work. I guess most of the artists I've worked with have ranged from pretty good to great. Not only Crumb, but there's a guy named Frank Stack who I think is a great comic book artist who was actually one of the pioneers, along with Crumb, of underground comics.
: You've spoken so much before about honestly portraying ordinary life through your comic writing. Were you concerned that you might turn out differently in the movie?
: To tell you the truth, the first thing I wanted out of this movie was money, so I was prepared to live with a really bad movie if I had to. Having retired from work I have a government pension so to make it I had to try to look at other sources of income. I'm looking at this not just the money I make from this but I'm hoping that it'll lead to something. And it has actually, it looks like it. For the first time I'll have a decent book contract with Random House. They put out a couple collections of my work, stuff that had previously come out on Doubleday in the 80s and it's selling quite well so I guess they decided to try some more stuff.
: Why did you first choose comics as a medium?
: Because there are things that could be done that haven't been done. Comics is just a regular medium, like movies or like novels, and it's being used in such a limited way. I used to read comics like a fiend when I was a kid in elementary school but I quit reading them because I outgrew them. I mean, it's kid's stuff for the most part-the Marvel and stuff. It didn't have any kind of interest for me at all.
And then I met Robert Crumb and I saw what he was doing and I saw the other guys in the underground comic books in the '60s. I had to re-evaluate what it could do. And I came to the conclusion that you could do anything in comics that you could do in any other art form but for some reason we've just been limited to one genre. I thought, ""God,"" I was a jazz critic at the time, and I wanted to do something, just do art. I couldn't paint or anything. But it just came to me: There are a lot of comics produced by more than one guy so I thought it would be OK if I wrote these storyboard-style scripts with stick figures and stuff.
: You've told your stories in comics, but you've also told other people's stories. What is your motivation behind doing that?
: Well, I find other people interesting. I don't think that I'm the only interesting person. And in a way, one of the reasons I'm writing about a guy like myself is because I think people undervalue themselves and anybody could be the subject of a great novel or something like that, so for me to ignore you, to go out and ignore everyone else. Lots of times I'll use myself as a vehicle, maybe I'll tell a story in first person but I'll be talking about somebody else and they'll be the focus of the story. There's this one thing I did you may have seen called ""Unsung Hero.""
: Was that the story about the Vietnam War veteran?
: Yeah, I worked with this guy who I thought was a real interesting storyteller. The way he put things, he was very succinct and so I just interviewed him. I'm planning to do a couple more.
: Just stories that interest you?
: Yeah, people that interest me. I'd like to do 150 pages, like a graphic non-novel, like a graphic biography. The fact that they've done so little with comics, it's a source amazement and frustration to me. When I started doing comics I figured more and more people would see the possibilities in comics and would use them in ever more varying ways. And that hasn't happened. In fact, you may know this but the whole industry is in the dumps right now.
A lot of trouble can be traced back to where Marvel decided that they'd only have one distributor then DC Comics said they'd only have one distributor so they squeezed a lot of people out. But I'm just amazed so little has happened, plus it's been demonstrated time and again, really interesting great stuff in comics and people just don't follow the lead, don't pick it up. When I realized that I jumped into it with both feet. It's great to be an innovator, to do something that pushes the boundary forward. But people should be getting into it just for selfish reasons. It's this unexplored territory. It should be like a gold rush-everybody running out there trying to make their fortune. That hasn't happened. It's just amazing to me, it's a reason I think people are so fucking stupid. Vote for George Bush and don't do anything more with alternative comics -my God!
