A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

AMERICAN SPLENDOR, TRANSCENDED: Harvey Pekar has passed away at the age of 70. If you were not a fan of his work, you may nonetheless remember him from appearances Letterman, or from a certain moderately successful biopic in which he was ably portrayed by Paul Giamatti.

How and why this man was important to that uniquely American artform, the comic book, as well as to literature and art more generally, is more than I can hope to capture competently with a few paragraphs of prose. (And you may be assured that no illustrators of note would volunteer to illuminate my musings on the topic.) But this -- among other reasons -- is why the gods of the internet have given us clickable links.

The best succinct summation of Pekar may be yesterday's "farewell" mention in The Comics Reporter. They certainly have the most comprehensive collection of Pekar links. This passage, in particular, resonates:

It is impossible to describe how important Pekar was to a generation of comics readers who sought something outside the overwhelming fealty to genre by the big publishers, how strongly his worked clashed with the dominant ethos, how instructive it was to be caught up in his quotidian travails and realize those things could carry you along as much as any other kind of art.

And since we like lists around here, here is Time's list of the Five (purportedly) Best Videos of Harvey Pekar, only two of which, mercifully, are from Letterman.

Rest in peace.