Summary
Writer Harvey Pekar was Cleveland's favorite dark, dysfunctional and curmudgeonly son. On the first anniversary of his death, we re-broadcast his 2003 interview with Elvis Mitchell.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment. |
| 0:14.7 | Welcome to the Treatment. |
| 0:15.9 | I'm Elvis Mitchell, Museum of Television and Radio in New York City. |
| 0:18.9 | And from the streets of Cleveland comes Harvey Peacar, and the author and creative American Splendor. He's at WCPN in Cleveland. Harvey, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Elvis. We all know you from the amazing American Splendor comics. And I guess if you can do a little bit of a recap for listeners who may not know or may not be as familiar. |
| 0:38.4 | Can you talk a little bit about how you got started doing the books? |
| 0:41.4 | I used to read comics when I was a little kid in elementary school and collect them, so I knew about them and everything. |
| 0:48.6 | But I got tired of them by the time I was about 11 years old because, you know, already they started to seem |
| 0:55.6 | corny and stereotype to me. Some years later, back in 1962, I was living in an apartment |
| 1:05.1 | in Cleveland and around the corner from me that moved a guy named Robert Crumb, |
| 1:12.1 | who some of you may be familiar with, a very famous, very fine cartoonist. |
| 1:17.9 | And at the time, we were both jazz record collectors, and we got together that way. |
| 1:23.9 | But I was looking at his work, and I saw where it was really revolutionary and was really |
| 1:31.4 | expanding what comics could do. And I started to think beyond like what Crum was doing, which was |
| 1:39.4 | sort of like documenting the hippie scene that he was involved in. And this is too. |
| 1:43.1 | The period of what people call underground comics is really starting to flourish, wasn't it? |
| 1:47.2 | Right. |
| 1:47.6 | This is, this is, we're talking about the, you know, the mid-60s now. |
| 1:51.8 | And I started thinking, well, you know, why can't I do something about my, you know, like my own life, you know, which is as a, you know, file clerk for the VA hospital, |
| 2:04.2 | that may not seem like a likely subject for a comic book hero. |
| 2:09.6 | But it seemed likely to you, obviously, and why did you think it was? |
| 2:15.2 | Yeah, I think, because I think that just about everybody's got an interesting story. |
| 2:19.6 | They can have their ups and downs, just like people are played by big movie stars. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.