PEKAR BRINGS AMERICAN SPLENDOR TO VERTIGO

[MattBrady]

As it turns out, The Quitter was only the start of Harvey Pekar’s relationship with DC.

According to the acclaimed comics creator, he’ll be bringing his American Splendor title to DC’s Vertigo imprint for a new miniseries to debut in 2006. The new miniseries will be Pekar’s traditional AS fare, autobiographical, slice of life stories illustrated by different artists.

Pekar’s Quitter collaborator, Dean Haspiel is the first artist named by Vertigo to be illustrating a story in American Splendor, and was, according to Pekar, again instrumental in landing the project at DC.

“Most of the stories I’ve done haven’t been novel length, and I’ve grown accustomed to primarily writing shorter pieces, and that’s still true to this day,” Pekar told Newsarama. “But the movie came up, and a lot of other things came up, and I made some deals to write graphic novels. As I was writing the longer stories, I was writing the short pieces too, and they were piling up. I wanted an outlet for them, and wanted to get back to publishing that type of stuff.

“I was talking with Dean about it and he said he’d mention it to DC, and it seems that they were favorably disposed to it. There haven’t been an immense amount of stories, but I had enough to fill the first issue already.”

Currently, the miniseries is slated to run as four 32 page issues, each with four stories running 20 pages, 8 pages, 2 pages and 2 pages, respectively.

“I just tend to write down whatever I run into,” Pekar said. “There will be two humors stories that will be two pages a piece, and they’ll be about some funny stuff I saw happening in an airport when I was waiting for an airplane, and later, when I had a weird conversation with a stewardess that I recorded. That’s fairly typical stuff – I see it, and hear it, and I write it down.”

The medium length story will be related to The Quitter in that it was a thread readers felt he left unresolved. “Apparently a lot of people wanted to know about what happened to my parents,” Pekar said. “I didn’t write about how they wound up in The Quitter, so some people were asking me about that and I wrote a story about their last years.

“The longest story in the books is about a 36 hour stretch in my life where a lot of problems came up and were miraculously taken care of in a short period of time – it started when my wife left town and left me with my kid, and my kid doesn’t exactly do everything I want her to do or say, so there was already some anticipation of trouble. But it’s mainly a humorous kind of story about different things that happened, like my cat running away. All these problems came up and got solved, one by one. By the time I went to bed, the only thing that hasn’t been solved is where the cat went. At 3:00 in the morning though, I was awakened by my cat stomping on my chest. I just ended up wondering how all of these things could come up, be so big in my life, and be resolved in such a short period of time.”

As for making American Splendor an ongoing concern, Perkar was quite the pragmatist. “A big thing is: will people buy the book? But if DC is happy, and they’re making a profit, I can keep it going for a pretty long time. So we’ll see.”

[Erik K]

I'd love to know what artists he has lined up for this. The Dean he mentions must be Dean Haspiel, but will he be the artist for everything? It would be more fun to have a mix. And color or black and white? Looking forward to this.

[adamcasey]

Best. Picture. Ever.

[ashgray]

Great for Harvey! All his books have been selling HOT at my shop, and QUITTER is just starting to take off too.

[Xenu Hater]

A century from now, when the old stigma about sequential fiction is gone, and people want to read about what life was like now, they will honor this man as one of the greats. Not a quirky human-interest story. One of the greats.

[Mercury]

Originally posted by adamcasey
Best. Picture. Ever.

yeah, I never realized how hardcore Harvey was in his youth til' I read The Quitter. not the Harv I was used to! that guy was kicking ass all the time.. anyhow, I'm utterly estatic to hear about the Vertigo move, and I'll be picking this up as soon as it hits the stands.

[c_andrew_s]

Harvey Rocks!!!

I loved quitter

[dollman]

The Quitter was the best illustrated American Splendor story I've picked up. Harvey is definitely acquired taste, and my initial exposure to him was his Lettermen appearances, where I thought he was a quirky indie creator.

The movie definitely changed my mind about him, and I picked up one of his AS anthologies. As one gets older, it's easier to appreciate his works.

[Mark Cardwell]

Presumably, throwing his hat in with Vertigo means the editorial might of DC can line him up with some great artists. Looking forward to seeing who.

[Xenu Hater]

This was a test that failed. Trying to include pic in signature. Notice lack of success.

[Justin M. Campbell]

So, Vertigo is running Harvey Pekar and, @ some point in the future, Eric Bogosian. Who's next?

[coinboynyc]

I've been a fan of Harvey Pekar for over 20 years now. It's great to see him finally get some success for his comics.

I hope his relationship with DC works out to Harvey's satisfaction to the extent that DC produces an Archives series of all the American Splendor comics. I have all the trade paperbacks, but they're not complete (not that they claimed to be), and his work deserves to be in a more permanent format.

Hooray for Harvey Pekar!

[coinboynyc]

Originally posted by Erik K
The Dean he mentions must be Dean Haspiel, but will he be the artist for everything? It would be more fun to have a mix.

I don't think Harvey has worked with any other artist named Dean, so it must be Haspiel, but I could be wrong. (I'm a big fan of Pekar's, but I don't consider myself an expert... at least, I don't want to pass myself off as one.)

The Quitter was essentially a thank-you present from Harvey to Dean for hooking him up with Good Machine, the people behind the movie. (Harvey asked what he could do to show his appreciation, and Dean said he'd like to collaborate with him on a long-form work.) But I don't think Dean will be the Harvey Pekar artist, any more than Greg Budgett and Gary Dumm were the Harvey Pekar artists or even R. Crumb was the Harvey Pekar artist.

One of the fun aspects of Harvey's work is seeing how different artists interpret his work; in fact, during the original self-published run of American Splendor Harvey published the same story twice, drawn by two different artists, in two different issues (this was the story where the librarian tells this guy that there's nothing wrong with writing poetry that rhymes).

If Harvey chooses to limit himself to working with one artist only, be it Dean Haspiel or someone else, I'd be surprised... but then again, Harvey's the creative force here, so we have to rely on his creative judgment.

[coinboynyc]

Me again... sorry for taking over this thread...

Just wanted to say that I hope the Vertigo run will incorporate the numbering of the original American Splendor series... one thing I didn't like about the Dark Horse run was that after the one magazine-size issue they published, when they started publishing the title in comic format, they didn't continue the original numbering.

[EmeraldGuy32]

Originally posted by Mercury
yeah, I never realized how hardcore Harvey was in his youth til' I read The Quitter. not the Harv I was used to! that guy was kicking ass all the time.. anyhow, I'm utterly estatic to hear about the Vertigo move, and I'll be picking this up as soon as it hits the stands.

Seriously, the guy didn't take sh*t from anyone. And as for the AS move to Vertigo....the is a God.

[Supreme Convoy]

Awesome news! Hopefully more people will check out Harvey's stuff.

[Cliffy]

Originally posted by Erik K
I'd love to know what artists he has lined up for this. The Dean he mentions must be Dean Haspiel, but will he be the artist for everything? It would be more fun to have a mix.

Typically Harvey has used a handful of artists in his American Splendor anthologies.

--Cliffy

[gOgIver]

The Childhood of Harvey Pekar, 'The Quitter'

[Gordon McAlpin]

Holy ____.

[violentmarv]

I'm happy that Harvey is getting that big Time Warner money. I hope the series is succesfull.

It's really cool that Vertigo has evolved so much over the years. There is just so much more variety than there used to be.

[TheRay]

Congrats to Harvey... and to Vertigo!

It's great to see Pekar's quirky, fun work continue to be appreciated!

[TheRay]

Originally posted by violentmarv
It's really cool that Vertigo has evolved so much over the years. There is just so much more variety than there used to be.

Definitely. There's LOADS of good stuff coming out of Vertigo... I'm totally diggin' the variety of work they're putting out... even if my wallet isn't!

[earth2tom]

Not to turn this into a DC/ Marvel thing, but this is what I completely love about modern day DC comics. They just continue to push the envelope. Sometimes even more than the indies. This is something that Marvel can learn from.

[manou]

I'm so happy for Harvey! And for me too, because finding Pekar's comics in France is not that easy...

[Lars]

American Splendor at Vertigo? This mean cross-overs with Constantine? I mean, they both had movies, right?

On a serious note, someone was askin' who the artist would be... if it's like the old straight-up American Spledor anthologies, it'll be several different artists.