American Splendor
Before you go getting all bent out of shape over yet another comic book movie adaptation hitting the summer theaters this year, consider that American Splendor is something of a different beast, as it always has been in comics. This story is not a heroic adventure. Instead, it chronicles the banal existence of an ordinary real-life file clerk named Harvey Pekar, played in the movie by Paul Giamatti, (aka “Pig Vomit” in Howard Stern’s Private Parts). It should be interesting to see how this potentially comedic placement plays out on screen, although I’d watch it simply from the vantage of comic book history.
An excerpt from Harvey’s Blog explains his foray into comics and his chance meeting with the ever-eccentric Robert Crumb.
At the age of about six, I was heavily into reading and collecting comics. The exploits of super heroes, Superman, Captain Marvel, thrilled me. I was particularly into oddball super heroes like the Green Lama, who had powers you didn’t run into everyday. As time went on though, my attitude toward comics changes [sic]. I remember getting tired of the clich» ridden, formulaic stories I ran into so often in action and adventure comics. I started to appreciate more the Captain Marvel comics, which were more humorous. In general though, the unsophisticated level of writing in comics bothered me more and more, and I eventually got tired of just about every one, except “Mad”, whose fresh satire was aimed at bright high school students.
In 1962 Robert Crumb moved from Philadelphia to Cleveland into an apartment right around the corner from me. He was about nineteen at the time and I was twenty-three. We were initially drawn together due to our mutual interest in jazz, but soon began to dig the new, alternative stories he was working on. After reading them, it gradually dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited art form. Indeed, comics had no limitations.
