PN Unscripted - 'Harvey Pekar's Cleveland'

Part history, part memoir, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland is a bittersweet farewell to a fine writer whose medium was comics but whose importance, in the bigger picture, will likely be far broader once the clearer perspective of hindsight is used to evaluate Pekar's life's work.  At the time of his death in 2010, Pekar was wrapping up work on Cleveland, and was already in the process of developing the book with artist Joseph Remnant, who does as fine a job as anyone in bringing visuals to Pekar's narrative -- particularly in the very specific demands of accurately representing the very real setting of Cleveland. Although Remnant's style is very different, I couldn't help but think of Chris Ware's work in terms of the "draftsman's eye" that Remnant must have had in illustrating this book.  It's a beautiful book -- as much about the place as the place, and could as easily have been called Cleveland's Harvey Pekar as Harvey Pekar's Cleveland.  It seems that Pekar, after all was said and done, was a neighborhood guy, a city-dweller, and, in that sense, he might even be a throwback of sorts in his attachment to place.  All the more sweetly nostalgic, then, is his final work.

I had a chance to talk with Pekar's window, Joyce Brabner, and Cleveland's artist, Joseph Remnant, at the Miami Book Fair in 2011.  Below is the lightly edited version of that full conversation.  In this Passing Notes unscripted, Brabner talks about her efforts to have a Pekar memorial built, her own work in comics, and, finally, the pending publication of Cleveland.

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