The Quitter

Although almost all of Pekar's work is autobiographical, The Quitter is the most sustained memoir he's given us. Much of what Pekar develops here has been gestured at in earlier issues of American Splendor. (I was particularly intrigued to read more about the famous knife/chair tussle between Pekar and his father that took place when Harvey was still in his teens.) But The Quitter offers a fuller, more developed narrative of the first 23 years of Pekar's life than found elsewhere. What makes this memoir fascinating for an audience wider than Pekar fanboys are the psychological questions it raises and the incredibly insightful artwork of Pekar's collaborator, Dean Haspiel. Pekar's entitles his life story The Quitter for a good reason: his self-perception is that he's always been so frightened of failure that he walks away from any project or possibility that doesn't offer easy and quick success. Raised by a demanding, never-satisfied mother and a distant, moody father, shy to the point of incoherency around girls, paranoid when it comes to high school coaches (perfectly certain that they were out to get him), trying to establish an identity by becoming a street thug--but clearly conflicted in making a name for himself by hurting other people--taking a series of undemanding but also unsatisfying jobs, cracking up in the Navy, walking away from college: Harvey's first two decades attest time and again to the fact that he's a walking catalog of neuroses. Insecure, paranoid, self-handicapping, and obsessive-compulsive: it's not easy being Harvey Pekar. But here's the thing: one suspects that without the neuroses, Pekar couldn't have been able to create the incredible art he has. American Splendor celebrates the everyday, finds "splendor" in the quotidian, but also chronicles the everyday anxieties (losing car keys, worrying about a leaky faucet, making room for books) that can temporarily overwhelm us. Pekar's paranoia and obsessive-compulsiveness makes him an acute observer of others and himself. So The Quitter is of interest to students of psychology (and especially the psychology of creativity) as well as Pekar fans.* Haspiel's artwork captures Pekar's neuroses with clarity and expressiveness, nicely blending past and present in contiguous panels. Representative is a two-page spread, with the mature Harvey's profile on the margins of both pages and the middle section filled with "memories." It's not simply clever paneling. It's sensitive artwork. _______ * Although perhaps obvious, it's important to point out that Pekar in fact isn't a "quitter" when it comes to his passions. He's been a music critic since 1959, he's continued with American Splendor through the lean as well as the fat years, and he throws himself into his passions (such as literature) wholeheartedly. He seems devoted to his wife and daughter. And let's not forget that he stuck out his VA job for thirty-odd years.

For every boy who feeled he failed his father..For Every man who lived in his father's shadow..For every son who craved his father approval and never recieved it..For those sons who felt the guilt of not living up to expectation of his parents... this book is your story American Splendor's Harvey Pekar writes another autobiographical graphic novel about his childhood with his father and family. Labeled the Quitter, this brutual honest piece speaks volumes. Its poignancy, as Pekar Splendor stories, are worth its weight in gold. With Dean Haspiel's art, thgis Pekar tale is given a new liveliness all I need to say is that Vertigo books, who publishes this one, should do more of Pekar's work...and Harvey, when is another Splendor collection coming? Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

Well, this makes up for my not owning a copy of American Splendor #1. No, not really. But it is worthy of the comic book Pekar. Love the photos at the end. The book fills in details of events in his life alluded to in earlier works. Great stuff.

This is another autobiographical comic book by Harvey Pekar. This time, he writes about his childhood up to his young adulthood. He has written about this in the past, but never this extensively before. The title of the book refers to himself, because when he was a young man he would quit anything that didn't come easy to him. He had an inferiority complex, which he tried to compensate for by being "great" at things. If he didn't do as well as he hoped, he would lose confidence and give up. I could tell you more, but it's better to just read the book and find out for yourself. Oh, I mustn't neglect to mention the great black and white artwork by Dean Haspiel. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in comic books for adults.

So here's the deal: The Quitter is easily one of the most solid graphic novels I've read, bar none. Harvey Pekar, famous for his American Splendor comics, as well as the film about him that shares the same name, is not the everyman that most articles predictably and laboriously paint him as. How do you refer to somebody who's been writing jazz reviews for forty years as an everyman? Or how about a guy who doesn't get to be on Letterman anymore, since he turned the tables on the open mockery of him one too many times? I've read most of American Splendor, and I've enjoyed it, but it's rarely knocked me out. Don't get me wrong, it's some impressive stuff-the impression varying greatly with each artist who illustrates Pekar's work-but it's never been the sort of thing that I'd go out of my way to pick up regularly. The slice-of-life dialogue can really be killer, but it always felt a bit disjointed to me. Man, Quitter kicks the crap out of that little stereotype I've been nursing. The usual 90/10 dialogue/narration formula is flipped over as Pekar writes about his amazingly interesting early life, from the heady days of his being the best street fighter in his neighborhood, to his occasionally debilitating bouts of inadequacy and paranoia, to his countless jobs and week in the Navy. This is no longer "slice of life," this IS life, and an incredibly interesting one at that. This is the kind of autobiographical stuff I can totally dig on; this is a guy going through and telling us his highs, his lows, and all with a detachment that's not totally unemotional. When I finished, I felt like I had a way better grasp on Harvey Pekar, and a far more vast respect for him and his life. I feel bad enough that I've gone this far without mentioning that this is-near as I can tell-the best art I've ever seen out of Dean Haspiel, and that's saying a lot. Easily the most impressive to me about this is that each panel isn't just the usual "snapshot" art. Instead, each one threatens to keep moving if you take your eyes off of it. We're talking Jack-Kirby's-Captain-America-is-striding-towards-the-Red-Skull-and-somebody's-gonna-lose-an-eye kinda power here. His framing of movement is incredible, with some amazing three-panel-spreads that tug your eyes along with the text, the character, and the flow of the story. Haspiel pulls nice camera angles without making them feel forced, and keeps the background as alive as the main character. One panel I really loved is where we see a young Pekar in class, watching the teacher, and a girl to the side looking away, but not at Pekar. It's like she's sneaking a glimpse at some off-panel crush, and Haspiel's letting us in on her secret. And the fights. A lot of this book comes down to fighting, where Pekar excelled, and was finally able to feel that he had accomplished something. His narrations of the schoolings are full of awesome, and Dino's art...man, some of those punches made m