SOURCE: Witek, Joseph. “‘You Can Do Anything with Words and Pictures’: Harvey Pekar's American Splendor.” In Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar, pp. 121-56. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1989.

In the following essay, Witek traces the history of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor series, asserting that Pekar's work represents a unique contribution to the comic book format—due to its focus on everyday life—and reverses the traditionally escapist tendencies of American graphic narratives.

American Splendor refuses to fit into any of the main categories of American comic books. This self-published black-and-white magazine-sized comic book is not a superhero or adventure comic, like nearly everything published by the two main comics publishers, Marvel and DC. It doesn't parody or rework traditional comic-book formulas, like most of the black-and-white comics put out by the growing number of “independent” publishers. And...