American Splendor #1 is not the prettiest cover in the world. It doesn’t have a superhero with a flowing cape shooting lasers out of his eyes, or a giant green monster smashing aliens. Instead, American Splendor presents Americana, an everyday scenario of three friends sitting on a stoop talking about nothing. This cover epitomizes everything that encompassed Harvey Pekar’s world and vision. It is straightforward, no-nonsense realism, representative of a lower income Midwestern community.
In a way, American Splendor is a proto-Seinfeld, a comic about nothing and everything all at once: a comic about life. Harvey Pekar, the “poet laureate of Cleveland,” was a rock star. For a quick understanding of his personality, watch this clip that both exemplifies his personality and his comic strip:
Pekar was from Cleveland, Ohio, and he used this as the backdrop for his comic world. Ironically, this is also the same town that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster hail from, the creators of Superman. Harvey Pekar is the polar opposite of the man of steel, an anti-hero who exists in a world far from the glitz of a stylized Metropolis.
American Splendor #1 came out in 1976, decades after the need for superheroes had come and gone. The realism highlighted in Pekar’s work set the tone for future indie realist comics. By writing essentially about his own life, Pekar simultaneously captured the culture and ambience of the times.
I chose to blog about Pekar’s American Splendor #1 comic because I have been a fan of him since 2003’s movie adaptation of the same name, starring Paul Giamatti. When I worked at a job promoting movies I actually got to meet Harvey Pekar. Unfortunately, I didn’t know any of the back-story, so I thought he was just an unhappy person. I didn’t know exactly who he was and all that he had created, and now I regret not appreciating him for just being himself, for being honest, just like his characters in the comic.
The cover is simple, colorful and I personally like the style of the artistry. It makes me want to read the rest, and I feel like the characters embodied on the stoop, although dumpy everyman characters in real life, are somehow elevated and immortalized just by their appearance on the cover.
Pekar died suddenly in 2010, but his legacy has endured and his comics are still relevant for today’s audiences.