American Splendor: Another Day
By Harvey Pekar (W) and many others (A)
Vertigo, $14.99
The Plot: By now, pretty much everyone knows about Harvey Pekar, the straight-talking, slice-of-life-telling, crusty persona of the comics industry. Let’s hope that, at the very least, most everyone has seen the great movie American Splendor. Since that came out a few years back, Pekar has gone from indie-comics mainstay to slightly-more-mainstream-comics mainstay. His book The Quitter (also published by Vertigo), was a hit, and now he returns with a collection of stories that originally published last year as individual issues. While The Quitter was a complete narrative, Another Day is more typical of Pekar’s work — a series of vignettes that range from banal to marginally eventful. There are small moments on bus rides, weird interactions at book signings and a battle with a toilet.
The Positives: Usually I jump into the writing first, but I want to give an off-the-top shout out to the art in this book. While Pekar is a very strong writer, he covers some incredibly boring material at times, which can present a hell of a challenge for artists who are used to a little more exciting material. Of the dozen or more artists contributing to this book, each brings a pretty different style, and it’s fun (in an art nerd sort of way) just to compare how they handle the same kind of stories. Eddie Campbell delivers probably the best work with his stripped down section, but all but a couple others deliver nearly as strong of a performance. Dean Haspiel, who delivered some awesome work on The Quitter, handles a bunch of stories in Another Day. For Haspiel’s thoughts on working with Pekar, check out my recent interview with him.
The Negatives: After the movie version of American Splendor, The Quitter was the first written work of Pekar’s that I read. I know, I know, I should’ve read his stuff before. But oh well. So, I was blown away by The Quitter. It was one of my favorite books of that year and shed a lot of light on Pekar’s background. Another Day falls short of that book, though. While it’s fun reading through all these little stories, some are just dull and don’t really illuminate anything about Pekar. It’s more like an illustrated diary entry. While most are good, there are a couple stinkers.
The Grade: B+ This book earns at least a B on the art alone, and Pekar’s self-reflective/destructive outlook is more than enough to bump it up a notch. It’s always refreshing to read his work after wading through the many indie comics that immitate his work without even whiffing his skill. Also, the part about a signing at the DC headquarters (including Haspiel illustrating himself taking his shirt off) is Pekar at his best.