never met harvey pekar but i did publish him in artcrimes

Time to feed from the dead.

Harvey Pekar, 70 years old, creator of the American Splendor comic book and co-star of the American Splendor movie, died yesterday in his Cleveland Heights home.

I always thought I’d meet Harvey because I was friends with a good number of his friends and Harvey was in three issues of my art/poetry journal ArtCrimes, but it never happened – we were both too anti-social.

Pekar was in ArtCrimes #4 (1988), #12 (1992) and #21 (2006).

He appeared in 4 and 12 because poet Daniel Thompson — his good friend and my co-editor for those two issues — asked him to contribute work, and he appeared #21 because it was the last ArtCrimes and I asked his artist friend Gary Dumm to inquire if it’d be okay for me to re-print it.

Actually it was a re-re-printing because Pekar put the same page in all three issues.

When I watched the movie American Splendor it was like watching a replay of everywhere I’d been in Cleveland, and most of the folk I’d been there with – in fact my friend poet Daniel Thompson appeared in several stories of American Splendor.

So so-long Harvey. You did Cleveland proud, and you called General Electric the Great Satan to its face on its own David Letterman TV show. Way to go.

Here are a couple decent news articles on his passing.

latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-pekar-appreciation-20100713,0,6170883.story

blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/07/cleveland_comic-book_legend_ha.html