Zitat des Tages von Harvey Pekar:
I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.
Of course I don't think I have it made by any means. I'm too insecure, obsessive and paranoid for that.
I don't want to play myself up as a hero, because it would make me unbelievable. I'd rather settle for people thinking that I'm a bum, but digging my stories, than liking me and not being able to believe in my stories. That's one reason I've been hard on myself, because I want my stuff to be believable.
I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'
My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.
I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers.
The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet.
I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor.
Misery loves company. There's a lot to that.
I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad.
I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.
Sometimes I want to convey something complex philosophically, and sometimes I just want to portray myself in a situation that I think other people have been in many times, but it hasn't been written about much.
People writing about me have said that I've influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them.
I like to go back over history and check out what people have written and whether I agree with it or not.
It didn't take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.
I was 16 years old, and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the '50s, and I realized that I didn't fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard.
It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.
I'm a guy that likes to sit in one place.
I decided I was going to tell these stories. I went around and met Crumb. He was the cartoonist. I started realizing comics weren't just kid stuff.
I was sort of on a mission with 'American Splendor.' I wanted to try to prove that comics could do things. I wanted to expand them beyond superheroes and talking animals. And I knew that was going to take a long time. But I just started writing an autobiography about my quotidian life.
It's extremely seldom that anybody wants me to change what I've written about them. Generally I portray them in a good light, if they're friends.
It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.
I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.
I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.
I'd been familiar with comics, and I'd collected 'em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn't much I was interested in.
I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.
I continue to be disappointed that people don't try and diversify the kind of work they are doing in comics.
I don't write about certain arguments I have with my wife. I'd get my head torn off if wrote about certain things.
Plays have been made of my comics.
Things improved a little bit in the '80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the '90s.
Everybody's like everybody else, and everybody's different from everybody else.
People who are readers of fiction aren't particularly interested in comic books.
When I was a kid, back in the '40s, I was a voracious comic book reader. And at that time, there was a lot of patriotism in the comics. They were called things like 'All-American Comics' or 'Star-Spangled Comics' or things like that. I decided to do a logo that was a parody of those comics, with 'American' as the first word.
I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.
As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.
Letterman... he got his problems. We don't get along too well.