Comic book legend Harvey Pekar, who "chronicled his life and times in the acclaimed autobiographical comic book series, American Splendor, portraying himself as a rumpled, depressed, obsessive-compulsive 'flunky file clerk' engaged in a constant battle with loneliness and anxiety," died yesterday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. He was 70.
"Among cartoonists and comics fans, the encomiums poured forth Monday at the news of Pekar's passing," the Washington Post observed, noting that "Neil Gaiman tweeted: 'A sad day for comics.' And Matt Fraction wrote on Twitter: 'So harvey pekar gets to the gates of heaven and goes, 'man, look at this line.' "
In the same piece, the Post featured a remembrance by Mike Rhode, who edited Harvey Pekar: Conversations: "Harvey's brains and willpower let him rise from his blue-collar beginnings, and eventually overcome his psychological fears to become a true part of American culture. I would think that he's the only Social Security file clerk to also be a jazz critic, book reviewer for the Washington Post, and comic book writer and have a major motion picture made about his life.... Harvey's work will live on after him, and he'll be taught in college courses for his groundbreaking autobiographical comix, and we're all richer for his sharing his experiences with us."
For Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog, Ken Tucker wrote that Pekar "probably became as well known as a cult figure can be without becoming a star--a term for which Pekar had no use in his value system. It’s sad that he’s dead; what’s wonderful is that there is a great mass of uncollected prose (all of his reviews for publications such as Down Beat and The Austin Chronicle) that should find a future publisher. And there’ll always be American Splendor, in which Pekar explained to an audience more used to reading about caped crusaders than janitors that it was often the the file clerks, the grocery-store baggers, and the janitors of the world who had more to tell us about our lives, and they spoke through Harvey Pekar."