The creator of the “American Splendor” comic book, Harvey Pekar, visited the State Historical Society on the Northwest side of Library Mall Monday night to give a lecture on his not-so-quite-ordinary life.
“American Splendor” is a semi-autobiographical comic book following Pekar’s “ordinary life” as a file clerk at a Veteran’s Affairs hospital. Pekar came into recent notoriety after the movie “American Splendor” dropped into theaters in 2003. Pekar immediately showed his appreciation for the crowd, made up of many University of Wisconsin students and Wisconsin-area residents, for trudging through sloppy sidewalks.
“That’s a lot for showing up on this rotten night,” Pekar said before he even introduced himself.
The movie, chronicling Pekar’s life and work as a comic-book writer, portrayed the Cleveland native as a sort of curmudgeon who does not normally look at the positive side of life. Throughout the speech, even after an audience member asked Pekar if the negative portrayal was unfair, Pekar never altered his usual unexcited tone.
Pekar spoke “for a while” on his life learning to appreciate comic books as a child, then trying to break the mold and write about an average person’s life.
“I think just about everybody could have a great novel written from their lives,” Pekar said. “I think just about everybody is interesting.”
Pekar added that he believes people who work 40 hours a week at jobs they hate to feed their families are just as great as people who slay dragons. Thus brought the inspiration for his comic strip.
He talked fairly extensively about his work with the movie, saying production took place at just the right time in his life, occurring right after he retired from a 37-year file-clerk job at a government office.
“I didn’t really care how I was portrayed, as long as I got paid for it,” Pekar said, adding that he really enjoyed the movie and it was pretty accurate.
For example, Pekar really did have a vasectomy at 35 to “take myself out of the running,” even though he wanted to get married at that time in his life. Pekar eventually became guardian of a young child. He also married a fan who sent him a “real hip” postcard asking for an old issue of his comic book and who asked Pekar to marry her the day after they met in person for the first time.
“I can’t turn down an offer like that,” Pekar joked.
Though Pekar made an income from the film project, which was originally an HBO television production, he would not like to travel anywhere and would rather stay in Cleveland — the city he believes could have led to his clinical depression.
“It’s a hard town to live in,” Pekar said, adding that only in a certain kind of city does the river start on fire.
UW senior Shaun Owens-Agase said he has been a fan for about a year now, and came because someone handed his girlfriend a flier for the event after seeing the movie “American Splendor.”
“My girlfriend’s really into his comics,” Owens-Agase said. He said he enjoyed the movie.
As for Pekar, he said, “Writing and reading is about all I can handle.”