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Specifically Derf Backderf’s Facebook photos which show the event held on Saturday and the transformation of a dilapidated Cleveland park into a new, vibrant space, all honoring one of Cleveland’s not memorable citizens. The park has a plaque (above) but also six banners drawn by Joseph Remnant and designed by Pekar’s widow, Joyce Brabner, that tell […]

Cleveland is getting a park dedicated to its comics laureate, Harvey Pekar, whose long running American Splendor comic captured the quotidian lives of Clevelanders. The celebration will run all afternoon with music and a screening of the film American Splendor (for my money the best comic book movie of all.) The afternoon will see a […]

Special correspondent Christian Hoffer went to the SPACE indie comics expo in Columbus and got a lot of comics and met a lot of people. Here's his report.

Z2 Comics just made news last week with a new line of periodicals, and here’s their fall graphic novel line, courtesy of Publishers Weekly. The slate includes a collection of Koren Shadmi’s awesome webcomic THE ABADDON, as well as a new edition of Cleveland by Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnent, and print editions of two Kickstarted projects: ASHES: A FIREFIGHTER’S TALE by Mario Candelaria and Karl Slominski; and PAWN SHOP by Joey Esposito and Sean Von Gorman.

“With the addition of three new books to Z2 Comics, the return of Harvey Pekar’s CLEVELAND to print and the recently announced launch of the Z2 Comics periodical line, this year promises to be our most ambitious yet. And it’s just the beginning,’ said publisher Josh Frankel.

The Eisner-nominated Cleveland was previously distributed by Top Shelf, but has sold out of its 10,000 copy initial print run, Frankel told PW.

We’ve admired The Abaddon (above) here at the Beat many times before; it’s gorgeous and getting it in a nice print edition is a real treat.

Here’s the full Z2 line-up:

 

ASHES: A FIREFIGHTER’S TALE written by Mario Candelaria with art by Karl Slominski.
(September 22, 2015; $19.99; 120 pages; black and white)

Matt always had an easygoing life. Girls liked him, his friends were more like family, and being a firefighter came naturally. Then the accident happened. Now, after the loss of his leg, Matt struggles to cope with his new handicap as he attempts to rebuild his shattered family and once budding career. A riveting tale about perseverance, hard work, and overcoming the odds, ASHES is a gripping tale told in stunning black and white.

PAWN SHOP written by Joey Esposito with art by Sean Von Gorman
(September 22, 2015; $19.99; 120 pages; full color)

A widower. A nurse. A punk. A Long Island Railroad employee. New York City is an ecosystem where everybody is connected, if only by the streets they walk on. This original graphic novel is the story of four people, in a city of eight million, whose lives unknowingly intersect through a Manhattan pawn shop.
Written by Joey Esposito (Footprints) and illustrated with a gorgeous mixture of watercolor and digital elements by Sean Von Gorman (Toe Tag Riot), PAWN SHOP explores the big things that separate us and the little moments that inexplicably unite us.

THE ABADDON written and illustrated by Koren Shadmi
(November 10, 2015; $24.99; 240 pages; full color)

Loosely based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, THE ABADDON is the story of a young man who finds himself trapped in a bizarre apartment with a group of ill-matched roommates. He discovers that his new home doesn’t adhere to any rational laws of nature and comes to realize that everyone living in the apartment is missing crucial parts of their memories and identities.

CLEVELAND by Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant
(November DATE TK; Price TK; 128; black and white)

A lifelong resident of Cleveland, Ohio, Harvey Pekar (1939-2010) pioneered autobiographical comics, mining the mundane for magic since 1976 in his critically acclaimed series American Splendor. Legendary comic book writer Harvey Pekar’s collaboration with artist Joseph Remnant, titled CLEVELAND, was originally published by Top Shelf Shelf Comics and Zip Comics in 2012 and includes an introduction by Alan Moore. The book presents key moments and characters from the city’s history, intertwined with Harvey’s own ups and downs, as relayed to us by Our Man and meticulously researched and rendered by artist Joseph Remnant. At once a history of Cleveland and a portrait of Harvey, it’s a tribute to the ordinary greatness of both.

Disclosure: Just to be upfront, Z2 and The Beat have partnered on several events in the past, and they are an occasional client of my consulting company.

Here’s the part where you support your favorite comic book creators almost as much you endorse the films they help make possible.

Kelly Sue DeConnick’s husband, Matt Fraction, will be making his first appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers this Thursday, May 21.

The other guests on the show include America’s Got Talent’s Heidi Klum, and funny man Richard Lewis. If that’s not the strangest and perfect line-up to offset the slowly dying Late Show With David Letterman, then I don’t know what is.

We are confident that Fraction will be the next Harvey Pekar of late night talk show. Hopefully, he shows Meyers first hand how to be a sex criminal, the origin of Pizza Dog, and discusses the glorious and  frustrating process of creating Casanova with Brazilian twins.

Don’t miss Fraction on Thursday at 12:35 a.m. on NBC.

Joseph Remnant, artist on Harvey Pekar’s CLEVELAND, channels a bit of that Pekar vibe along with writer Jeff Newelt in this online comics about jazz musician Paul Shapiro, whose new album  VERSES , is out featuring famed guitarist Marc Ribot. It’s on John Zorn’s TZADIK label, so if you like Masala, you might like this. 

The strip is all about Shapiro’s career as a “Jewish jazz musician.”

Remnant certainly put himself on the list of young cartoonists to watch with his Eisner-nominated work on Cleveland. His “Cartoon CLouds” webcomic can be found on The Expositor

The creative team previously ganged together for this comic, done for Newelt’s wedding, where Shapiro played. (And a former guest testifies that the music ws hoppin’!)

Political commentary blog Scholars and Rogues is running a series of artistic tributes to the late Harvey Pekar by such folks as Kenny Be (Westword), A.N. Cargo (S&R), Derf (The City), Benjamin Frisch (Wonkette), Karl Christian Krumpholz (Byron), Mike Keefe (Denver Post), Peter Kuper (MAD), Zina Saunders (Overlooked New York) and Aaron Williams (Nodwick). A new piece will be posted each Monday through the end of the year. Above art by Karl Christian.

When Harvey Pekar died on July 12th, he was revealed in death to be a figure more influential and revered than he would ever have dared hope in life. He left a literary legacy as well as a wealth of projects in the pipeline. And he also left some awkwardness, as Dave Itzkoff in the New York Times writes in a revealing piece entitled The Unsettled Afterlife of Harvey Pekar:

His obsessive drive combined with the sheer number of his collaborations produced a two-dimensional record of his shaggy life, rendered in varying styles by numerous illustrators. Now only his widow and the artists he worked with are left to narrate his final chapter, a tale of bruised feelings and allegations of opportunism, with nothing more at stake than the writer’s modest legacy. But no matter how it plays out, Mr. Pekar is bound to emerge as enigmatic as ever.

The arrangement was different from what Mr. Pekar and Ms. Brabner were used to. “People think that they should get paid up front especially when they have a history of getting paid up front,” said Mr. Haspiel, who runs his own Web comics site, act-i-vate.com. But Mr. Pekar agreed to it because “he understood that you have to promote yourself, and you have to be out there constantly,” Mr. Haspiel said. “Not only working with Joyce.”

On Friday, KCRW will replay a 1991 radio adaptation of Vince Waldron’s AMERICAN SPLENDOR stage play, starring Dan (Homer Simpson) Castellaneta. The original stage play (which we saw in person) was a wonderful adaptationof the late Harvey Pekar’s work, and this version is has a lot of the same charms. The play will be available ONLY on air and by live stream and will not be available for download, so set those tape recorders.

On December 6th, 1991, public radio station KCRW-Santa Monica (89.9 FM; www.KCRW.com) broadcast an original radio production of Harvey Pekar’s “American Splendor.”
 
To honor Pekar’s memory, KCRW will reprise the radio production on Friday, July 16 from 7:30 to 8 pm (pre-empting “Says You,” the regularly scheduled program).
 
Pekar, who died this week at the age of 70, was a cult phenomenon and considered Cleveland’s favorite dark, dysfunctional and curmudgeonly son. “American Splendor” was one of his most popular autobiographical comics, and the one that brought him to the attention of Hollywood.
 
In 1990, “American Splendor” was adapted for stage, written and directed by Vince Waldron, and featured Dan Castellaneta—the voiceover actor now best known as the voice of Homer Simpson—as Harvey Pekar. The Instant Theatre Production opened at Jeff Murray’s Theatre/Theater in Hollywood on September 29, 1990 and closed September 28, 1991.
 
Waldron then adapted the stage production for radio station KCRW, and once again, Castellaneta came to embody Pekar in this original half-hour production. The station’s producers were Jacqueline des Lauriers and Bob Carlson.
 
In 2003, “American Splendor” was made into a film starring Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis, which was later nominated for an Oscar in the Best Adapted Screenplay category.

This broadcast will appear on air and via KCRW.com live stream ONLY, and will not be available on demand or via podcast.

When Harvey Pekar died suddenly on Monday, he left several comics projects in the works, and Rick Marshall asked Pekar’s recent editor, Jeff Newelt, about what unfinished projects we might be seeing eventually. There are several comics from The Pekar Project finished and awaiting publication; Newelt is working on a tribute comic that he wrote himself. Pekar also had another graphic novel in the works:

The first branch-off of “The Pekar Project” is coming out this year. He was working on a graphic novel called “Cleveland,” which comes out during the summer of 2011 from this company called Zip Comics. The script was ready for that. It’s one-third history of Cleveland, one-third Harvey’s experiences there, and one-third biographical sketches of Cleveland characters. It’s drawn by Joseph Remnant, one of the definitive Pekar artists.

It would have pleased Harvey Pekar, I think, that his passing yesterday was noted in every media outlet from the New Yorker to EW, and not just because they made a movie about him, but as a literary figure to worth and stature. Harvey’s life’s work was in showing that the ordinary was important, and a working class existence was not a prison but a journey through the profound and beautiful that anyone could experience if they took the time. He found that beauty in simple, quotidian things and experiences that others might have found trivial or mundane, but in the end his message was that what else is there? Life as it is lived is the most precious gift of all.

Of course, it is also painful and frustrating. Our Cancer Year was a harrowing, honest account that didn’t shy away from the indignities and suffering that a cancer victim can undergo. And it didn’t shy away from the unflattering. Pekar’s work explored self pity but didn’t wallow in it — or when it did it was knowingly. Harvey was a kvetch and a complainer, but as the many loving tributes that have poured in show, he was also full of compassion and joy and friendship. For all of his legendary crankiness, there was most often a loving twinkle in his eye, a love born of the simple pleasure of talking with a friend or sharing his enthusiasm for art and music.

I first met Harvey at a San Diego many years ago. It was his first one, and he had been out at used bookstores with a friend all day, an experience that was so exciting that he had lost his voice entirely — which was a pretty common occurrence. His throaty rasp was part of his persona, as was his vernacular speech and enthusiasm for music and literature.

I’d read early issues of American Splendor and while a young woman emerging from an emotionally isolated adolescence wouldn’t seem to have much in common with a middle-aged filing clerk, his message was one that I could easily grasp and latch onto wholeheartedly: in an existence that was bound to be fraught with unexpected pain and struggle why NOT enjoy the relief of deeper thoughts than your own? Why NOT experience the satori of life’s perfect moments no matter how small?

I’ve reproduced above one of my favorite pages, from American Splendor #11 that I’ve thought of many time in the intervening years. The art is undeniably awkward, but the story and effect is perfect. That sums up a lot of Harvey’s work — he often worked with collaborators who were awkward in their own way but captured his intentions, at least. I alluded yesterday briefly to Harvey’s importance to comics and surely that will be discussed and analyzed more as time passes. Along with his underground contemporaries, he pioneered comics as a medium that could handle everyday drama and humor with all the skill and impact that its fantastic practitioners were better known for. It’s not that comics COULDN’T have done such things before, it’s just that they didn’t. While Krazy Kat and Peanuts may have wondrously limned the human heart they still used magical landscapes and sentient dogs. Harvey had to stick in the here and now, and favored realistic art styles that were much harder to execute than cartoony distillation.

What set American Splendor&rsquo