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Graphic novelist Harvey Pekar dead at 70

The Ohio Chronicle-Telegraph is reporting that Harvey Pekar, the iconoclastic creator of the graphic novel American Splendor, has died at age 70. Pekar was best known for his autobiographical stories that examined the combined absurdities and profundities of everyday life.

From the Chronicle-Telegraph:

Pekar, who devoted his life to showing that ordinary existence is rich and varied, was found by his wife in his Cleveland Heights home about 1 a.m., [Cuyahoga County coroner’s spokesman Powell] Caesar said.

Cleveland Heights police Capt. Michael Cannon told the Associated Press Pekar had been suffering from prostate cancer, asthma, high blood pressure and depression.

Pekar was heavily influenced by the work of R. Crumb, with whom he collaborated on his early work. Crumb called Pekar “the soul of Cleveland,” and said the subject matter of his work is “so staggeringly mundane it verges on the exotic.”

Cleveland.com has posted a tribute to Pekar. It notes the writer’s sardonic humour and the self-deprecating way he reacted to success:

Pekar often complained that he made no money from his comics, but they did not go unappreciated. He won the American Book Award in 1987 for his first anthology of American Splendor. He was a regular guest on Late Night With David Letterman. He won a Peabody Award for his commentary on WKSU 89.7/FM. And in 2003, the film adaptation of his comics, also titled American Splendor, won the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic films at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

Pekar reacted to the prize with his characteristic mordant wit.

“I’m always shook up and nervous and I’ve got the hospital record to prove it,” he said that night. “I wake up every morning in a cold sweat, regardless of how well things went the day before. And put that I said that in a somewhat but not completely tongue-in-cheek way.”