It's hard to find evidence for who was the creator of the autobiographic comic and so it is easy to put that honour on Harvey Pekar. He as good as deserves it anyway. Throughout his work as a comic writer, particularly through his comic American Splendor, Mr Pekar talked of his cranky life as an office worker and music collector. He'd harp on with his observations of life and love with a dry frustration that not just lent itself to the comic medium but created a whole genre in that medium.
Pekar's work began as self published in '76. Robert Crumb was the first and most often and most important artist to illustrate Pekar's commentary of monotony, art, life and relationships. Important artists followed suit and depicted Pekar's world intermittently up until 2008, culminating in a rather decent movie.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of what will become the legacy of Harvey Pekar is that his art, his work, was almost inseparable from the man himself. His publications weren't just biographies but part of the overall living art installation that was Harvey Pekar. And this living art began modestly and slowly ingrained itself upon the American indy unconscious to construct an unashamedly narrow window of a universe that many could identify as their own life in mundane America.
I predict and hope we'll see one last work The Death of Harvey Pekar. I'm sure it'll be as wry and self effacingly bitter as anything he's written. It'll be an art installation complete.
Harvy Pekar October 8, 1939 - July 12, 2010
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