More sad news for 2010: Cleveland comic-book legend Harvey Pekar dead at age 70 by Joanna Connors of The Plain Dealer.
FORMAL OBITUARIES:
The Comics Reporter: Harvey Pekar, 1939-2010 by Tom Spurgeon
The New York Times: Harvey Pekar, ‘American Splendor’ Creator, Dies at 70 by William Grimes
INTERVIEWS:
The Comics Journal: Gary Groth Interviews Harvey Pekar (1984) Part One of Two
The Comics Journal: Gary Groth Interviews Harvey Pekar (1984) Part Two of Two
The Comics Journal: Gary Groth interviews Harvey Pekar (1993)
NOTICES AND TRIBUTES:
Alison Bechdel: very sad news
Anthony Bourdain’s Blog: The Original (Goodbye Splendor) by Anthony Bourdain
BenAdamsArts.com: R. I. P. Harvey Pekar by Ben Adams
The Comics Journal: Harvey Pekar: An Appreciation by Rob Clough
The Comics Journal: HARVEY PEKAR, 1939-2010 by Jared Gardner
The Comics Journal: The Determination to Be an Artist by R. Fiore
Fantagraphics Books: FLOG! Blog: Harvey Pekar, R.I.P. by Eric Reynolds
The Huffington Post: Harvey Pekar Dead: ‘American Splendor’ Comic Book Author Dies At 70 by Thomas J. Sheeran and Jake Coyle
Los Angeles Times: Harvey Pekar: An Appreciation by David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic, who writes:
Pekar, by all accounts, was a tough guy to be around: angry, confrontational, beset by grudges and troubles over money, an obsessive worrier. He never hid any of this, but wrote about it instead. That made him as brave as almost any artist I can think of — unadorned, unfiltered, less concerned with how the world thought of him than with how he thought of himself. It also made him an essential aesthetic bridge between, say, Will Eisner, who mined the lives of ordinary people in his 1978 graphic novel “A Contract with God,” and contemporary artists such as Jessica Abel, Adrian Tomine and Alison Bechdel, whose comics traverse a similar existential territory, in which the mundane (and sometimes not-so-mundane) material of daily life becomes the substance of their work.
News from Me: Harvey Pekar, R.I.P. by Mark Evanier
NYTimes.com ArtsBeat Blog: Harvey Pekar, Who Chronicled Ordinary Lives in ‘American Splendor’ Comics, Dies by Dave Itzkoff
The Washington Post: Comic Riffs: Remembering Harvey Pekar, legendary bard of the ‘underground’ comic book by Michael Cavna
Ragged Claws Network 