Harvey Pekar on His Career and Comics.mov

I was lucky in that I you know that you know was friends with Robert Crumb who was one of the greatest you know cartoonist of all time and I met him when I was 22 years old and he was 19 he had gotten out of high school and then he just laid around the house and in Philadelphia for about you know a year and then he came to Cleveland and moved in with a guy he'd been corresponding with so he was right around the corner and actually you know what we had in common at that time you know were was that we were record collectors but you know he showed me some of his work and I was blown away I thought yeah man that's what got me thinking about you know that comics could could you know you could do just about anything you wanted to in comics at that time he was working on a graphic novel this is 1962 you know which was you know one of the first graphic novels called the big yum-yum book although it didn't get published until 1975 and I you know I'd never seen anything like it it was although you know it was influenced by Harvey Kurtzman to some extent and crumb had actually worked with Kurtzman when he was will even when he was working in Cleveland you know with American Greetings corporation so we stayed in touch over the years and and said you know and I kept on theorizing about how comics could do anything and how you know the reason that they had kind of a bad name what the general public was because the people who produced him had such limited concepts of what could be done with them and you know I mean it just wound up being practically all superhero stuff which is fine for the you know the you know the you know kids who like that kind of thing but most people don't have a lot of you for so you know he had a kind of limited market so I you know when I saw what Crum was doing I thought geez you know this is great but you know it can be taken way farther I mean you know there's room for all kinds of different things there's never been a realist movement in comics you know for example you know I thought well I'll get into that so that's so in 72 he came to to my apartment you know he was on you know like a you know he used to take an annual trip across the United States and stopping at all these places where he knew people and stay a couple of weeks and then move on to the next place so he was staying with me and I wrote a couple of scripts well actually I were you know more than a couple you know I wrote a stack of scripts you know in um you know using a kind of a storyboard style you know just real crude but you know I put the dialogue in and everything and I showed I showed it to Chrome I said do you think this has any potential and he said he said yeah can I take it home with me you know he liked it he said could I take it home and you know do someone so that I mean that gave me a huge break from worked on my comic book for a pretty long time for so you know several some years and he did and you know at some points he did like you know big ambitious stories illustrate so you know people would buy the it initially would buy the thing because you know of crumbs name but then you know gradually you know my stuff I mean what i was doing started you know get out I thought that you know just getting paid for the movie you know was all I was going to get out of it and I got paid you know pretty good amount of money so you know I was you know I wasn't looking for anything after that but what happened was that they you know the I guess the producers of the movie wanted to get out of compact companion volume of American Splendor so they you know they came up with this volume of American Splendor and you know it's about 300 and some pages long and amazingly it sold I haven't had you know I I had not never had an experience of any you know any of my books you know selling fairly well but this did and that opened it up for me you know with not only a Random House where I got another four book contract but you know with other other publishers and and you know that's the way I'm printed principal way I make my living today you know I get a pension but it doesn't amount so much I couldn't live on it with my wife we couldn't make it it's got unlimited potential I mean any art form where you can use any word in the dictionary all the words Shakespeare used you know like he doesn't have a copyright on them you know you can use any any word you want you can use the vast variety of illustration styles I mean it's I mean they're very comparable to movies I mean both of them use words and pictures movies use moving pictures and spoken words and comics use you know still pictures and silent you know I mean and there you still think of pictures and and written words so I I think they're very comparable also some of my work has been developed into plays besides is this a motion picture American Splendor some of it it's on three occasions they you know it's been presented you know on stage and it's gotten good reaction and you know a lot of times they'll use the stories just exactly as they get oh so I think I think you know comics have gotten off to such a rotten start although certainly some people are making a lot of money in comics but I mean considering what comics can do I mean they've been tremendously limited by the people that produce them and they should be able to just do any kind of story that you want to do superhero comics I mean superheroes are not even like a I mean there're a shanwa of a genre there are science fiction books and and yet they're still you know by far the most popular comic books oh that's you know that doesn't make any sense to me I mean you know like science fiction books I had nothing against science fiction books but science fiction books don't dominate the book trade you know why should they dominate comics you should have all kinds of different books in there you know in comic form and you can you know I mean I you know people have you know gradually extended the medium you know like and and they've been very successful at it like for instance Joe Sacco who you know was a trained journalist you know an outstanding you know journalism student at Portland State University and you know real interested in politics and and went out and showed that you could do real good journalism in comics you know other people have done other things comparable you know but there haven't been enough of them and so I don't think that comics are people real I don't think that people realize how you know how good comics could be are and can be you know at their best

Channel: Ken Mills

Views: 34,263

Rating: 4.9285712 out of 5

Keywords: Harvey Pekar, American Splendor, Cartoonist, comic books, graphic novels, mills james, jeff smith, bone, robert crumb, comics, autobiographical

Id: AS2vKaO8nS0

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2010

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