Harvey Pekar

I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.

I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it’s American Squalor.

I don’t write about certain arguments I have with my wife. I’d get my head torn off if wrote about certain things.

People who are readers of fiction aren’t particularly interested in comic books.

I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I’ll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.

Letterman… he got his problems. We don’t get along too well.

It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.

I’ve probably had my day in the sun. I think I’ve influenced a lot of comic book writers.

I decided I was going to tell these stories. I went around and met Crumb. He was the cartoonist. I started realizing comics weren’t just kid stuff.

I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.

American Splendor is just an ongoing journal. It’s an ongoing autobiography. I started it when I was in my early 30s, and I just keep going.

I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad.

It makes you feel good to know that there’s other people afflicted like you.

I try and write the way things happen. I don’t try and fulfill people’s wishes.

Everybody’s like everybody else, and everybody’s different from everybody else.

I continue to be disappointed that people don’t try and diversify the kind of work they are doing in comics.

There hasn’t been enough change in comics to suit me. I don’t know why exactly.

I really don’t have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It’s like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.

Plays have been made of my comics.

It didn’t take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.

I’d been familiar with comics, and I’d collected ’em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn’t much I was interested in.

I’m a guy that likes to sit in one place.

Things improved a little bit in the ’80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the ’90s.

My work looks like a comic book in form, but it’s not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.

I’m doing research for a large comic book on the Beat Generation guys – Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and those guys.

It’s extremely seldom that anybody wants me to change what I’ve written about them. Generally I portray them in a good light, if they’re friends.

The film’s success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn’t had a big impact on my life yet.

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

People writing about me have said that I’ve influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them.

I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.