Hello All, Lou's review of Harvey Pekar is another fine posting on U.S. culture. Harvey Pekar caught my attention a long time ago, 1984. Harvey portrayed himself in his comics as something of left oriented, but what I found interesting about Harvey was his eye tuned to the kind of life I've led. Poor neighborhoods, cheap apartments, friendship being the biggest reward of my life. Perhaps most important to me of a rootedness in one area of living in.
Harvey aspired to use the comics as literature on a level with the famous writers. And Harvey's work is realist. Interior monologues and examination of what real people say to each other. Often leaving the reader with drawing one's own conclusion. A socialistic sort of aspiration. Another interesting comic book maker is Scott McCloud who offers context and meaning to what Harvey aspires to. Scott's work is about the comic book in a theoretical way. Looking at the pictorial conventions that pervade Euro-American sensibilities, Europe, and Japan, Scott offers the inside understanding that the comic book authoress must assimilate. The Japanese being probably the greatest visual artists of all cultures have a 'vocabulary' much beyond what is typical here in comic books. The comic book industry is the little shop, the out of sight or isolated authoress etc that we associate with writing. Scott gives some decent insight into what people think about to make a good comic book. One of the more interesting aspects of Harvey's work is that he collaborates with a variety of illustrators. Historically with the decline of realism in U.S. art being an illustrator has similarly sunk low in art world esteem. Not so many illustrators have the privilege to work with the ambition that Harvey has. Whatever Robert Crumb's own comics rise to, Harvey is a better writer in my view. The great thing about comics is the combination of pictures with writing. Harvey's focus on realism has more in common with the movies than with what most still picture makers do, or for that matter Harvey's work has to do with the novel. Movies move though. Harvey uses a storyboard to assemble the word structure upon for his collaborators to illustrate. That is quite like Hitchcock for example. It is no surprise that a movie about Harvey has lot's of potential since the basic planning for Harvey's stories follows the same methods that most commercial movies are based on. The question though is of the raw flavor that Harvey brings to a movie could translate into something more intrinsic to a great comic book expansion. I just don't think comics can expand out of their niche. The economics of comic book expression have little access to mass media expression directly. So there just isn't going to be a rise of comics as perhaps Hip Hop was to music. Scott McCloud again writes well about why this is true. I of course like the medium and don't wish it any ill wind by saying the above. Rather I think the internet presents a better outlet for the same sort of aspirations that just can't be consummated in the comic printed media. The big issue? The audience willing to support the serious directions that some people will go to like Harvey. The game playing 'worlds' of video games offer a tantalizing image of where comics could go. The mammoth collaboration and emergence of special personalities augers well for a new kind of narrative structure. The conversational work of art. What does that mean? Another way that the internet frees the medium of the comic book is to take advantage of location in new ways. Where his comic books really represents Cleveland Harvey does not attach his pictures to the world around him in ways that the internet really allows. Sticking a photo upon a telephone pole in the neighborhood is one thing, it is quite another for a writing to be really rooted in a time and location as one might hope for in the internet based mediums. Allowing the artist of a time and place to go into the remembrance of things past. Doyle
