henke on 12/7/2010 at 20:53

---

Harvey Pekar worked as a government fileclerk in Cleveland all his life. On the side he did a bit of journalism, reviewing jazz-albums, and he also wrote a comicbook series called "American Splendor". The series dealt mostly with Pekar's own life, anxieties, struggles with work, struggle with cancer, trying to make it into the bigtime. But fame never did find Harvey, he never made big money of his books, but remained an underground cult-figure, and had to keep on working well after retirement age to make ends meet. In 2003 he finally did get his big payday however, when the long-delayed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APpxQm7sH5k&feature=player_embedded) movie-version of American Splendor hit the screen. Metacritic recently ranked it as (http://features.metacritic.com/features/2010/best-and-worst-comic-book-movies/) the best reviewed comicbook-to-film adaptation ever and I gotta say I agree with the critics on this one (yup, even better than The Dark Knight). It's a wonderful piece of quasi-documentary storytelling and Paul Giamatti delivers the best performance of his career in it.

So, last week I was over at a friends place and American Splendor somehow enters the conversation. Turns out my friend has a 300-page American Splendor-anthology, which I promtly borrow and have been reading, and enjoying, since. So it came as an odd coincidence to me when I read the news, and found out that Harvey died today. Seems like he was still actively writing new comics and enjoying his hard-earned Golden Years. So it's sad to see him go at the not-too-old age of 70. Rest in peace Harvey. :(

(http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-harvey-pekar,42985/) A.V. Club News Report

old toro on 14/7/2010 at 02:01

---

Never saw the comics, but I greatly enjoyed the movie. RIP.