That's a valid point.

Jack Kirby had great creative talent as an artist, but he produced some stinkers, too. Nor was Will Eisner always at the top of his game. And I think that sometimes, later in their careers, when the Legendary Creators were recognized as such and tried their hardest to deliver a Piece of Art ... that's when they tended to fall a bit flat.

Just my opinion.

I thought CONTRACT WITH GOD was good. But I would not place it much higher up the scale than the best of THE SPIRIT, which I thought was equally good.

And I wouldn't hold out much hope for this new project being cobbled together by Kirby's daughter, a hybrid of some of his unpublished 1970s ideas and drawings as finished by her and other people, if I understand right. Maybe it will be brilliant. It sounds a bit labored to me. Not everything Kirby touched turned to gold.

...

Anyway, Dumas, back to you.

I say this with love: Read whatever the hell you want, and don't worry what others think about it. There are good super-hero comics. Ditto cowboy comics. Ditto zombie comics. Ditto sci-fi comics. Ditto horror comics. Ditto war comics. Ditto indie autobiographical comics. And there are crap comics in all those categories, too. Pick what you want, and stop being so neurotic about your choices.

Now, if you suspect you're missing something in your current diet ... that might be because you are. I don't know. I don't know the entirety of what you read. I'd always encourage you to try a new title, a new genre. Stretch your brain. But it's up to you.

I'm neurotic about a lot of things in life, but comics aren't one of them.

I just thought it might be nice to talk about the stuff I find interesting.

So, could anyone explain to me why Harvey Pekar's work is so great? I can understand the praise of Will Eisner's work more readily than I can the praise of Pekar.

Really, I'm curious. I'd like to know the reasons people like Pekar. I may not necessarily agree with them, but I'd like to hear them.

Eisner deserves praise for his efforts to broaden what he does with the artform and for being a landmark creator who worked to make the public understand that maybe there was more to comics than they previously thought, but I’d be a liar if I suggested the later Eisner I’ve read (far from a comprehensive reading, mind you) has been in any way groundbreaking. When I first read A Life Force, for instance, it kind of came across as what it was – an older creator from yesteryear trying his damndest to create a poignant story, but doing it with yesteryear’s comic language.

Oh, I liked it a good deal, make no mistake. He has a visual shorthand that works very well when showing the reader a sort of “template” person – down and out blue collar worker, that kind of thing – and he clearly feels very free on the page when it comes to layout without ever falling into the trap of having scattered pages, but I did not feel the kind of awe I thought I was supposed to feel. The stories were very nice, and his storytelling is as crisp as it comes, but emotionally I was not drawn in.

In my opinion, what Lawson implied is accurate; Eisner's later work is certainly very good, but it's not the quantum leap forward from The Spirit as some might have you believe.

I'm lousy at this sort of thing, but I'll try, because I do think Pekar's work is great.

Pekar is an angry man. Self-loathing, but also misanthropic. He can spot a person's flaws and sinister motives a mile off, including his own. He can explain why a given situation or institution is so incredibly frustrating to most of us.

He's fearless about it, too. This is the guy who went on David Letterman's show, insulted Letterman as a show-biz phony and got blacklisted, throwing a big wrench in his career as a self-published comics writer. He loudly announced to his wife, on their first date, that he had had a vasectomy, so if she was looking for a baby, she better keep looking.

That anger, intelligence and candor makes his point of view interesting. (It would not necessarily make him a pleasant dinner companion. Or, in my opinion, a terrific husband. But hey, I didn't marry him.)

Pekar is more than just an articulate, angry guy, though. He dropped out of college, but he has read widely, appreciates art and is a jazz critic. He thinks. He has worthwhile things to say.

Nor is Pekar still living alone in a crummy, dark bachelor's apartment in Cleveland, as he was for the first few years of his comic. That would have gotten boring. No, he got married. He got cancer. He recovered. He and his wife adopted a daughter. He retired from his job as a filing clerk at the V.A. hospital. He sold the rights to his comic to a Hollywood producer, which made a movie about him. We got to see all of this through his eyes.

Pekar can't draw worth a damn, so his comics are drawn by different artists. Some (R. Crumb, Gary Drumm) are good. Some (Frank Stack) aren't my cup of tea, frankly.

But as a writer, he has interesting things to say, and he says them in an interesting way. That's what makes a good story for me, comics or otherwise.

hmm, if i want to be entertained by someone telling stories about life thru their personal experiances, i'd rather watch a comedian.

Dumas talks at length about how he just doesn't understand all the fuss over CONTRACT WITH GOD, MAUS and other venerable indie comics, and could somebody please explain to him why they're any better for him to read than MARVEL TEAM-UP.

Reminds me of a story that author Harlan Ellison used to tell. Ellison said a woman called him at home late one night. Said she usually loved his books, but she had just finished one short story that she didn't get. She couldn't understand the point of it.

Awoken from his slumber, Ellison said, he tried to explain the short story to her (rather than trick her into revealing her home address, driving over there and killing her for waking him up, which is the behavior one tends to expect of Ellison).

He told her the origins of that story, of the characters. He told her what points he was trying to make. No success. After about 30 minutes, he told her: "Look, you get most of my stories. You didn't get this one. That's a good batting average. Don't worry about it. Go to sleep."

At which point, he said, the woman became angry and abusive, and accused him of mocking her and looking down on her. When he finally hung up, she was still shrieking.

We all hate the idea that we're missing out on something, or that the other fellow is mocking us for not getting what he seems to be getting.

Maybe it's OK not to worry about it quite so much.

Actually, I do get all the fuss and I was never into Marvel Team-Up. I picked that title off the top of my head.

What I was trying to do was employ the Socratic method to geeking out over comics, so now I'm mostly just not sure how to respond to your comments about me feeling bad about what I read.

I feel no shame about any of the comics I own... except for that issue of American Woman I bought for ironic reasons.

I don't feel a void in my life, either.

I like some humor, genre and superhero comics that fall somewhere under the small press/indie/self-published umbrella. I don't feel neurotic or defensive about preferring fun stuff like Bone or Dork! over things like David Boring.

There must be something half-assed about my dialectic approach that gives people the wrong idea, because people infer all sorts of things from my posts that never occurred to me.

Thanks for the concern, Lawson.

Thanks for the reply, Lawson.

It shows the people's tastes really do vary. Virtually everything you said about Pekar's work makes me NOT want to read it! But I do see why you and others find it interesting, at least. He certainly does offer a perspective like no other.

You know what was awesome? In high-school, we had Maus for an English study text.
That's my kinda learnin'. 'Cus even though i love my superheroes, who can deny the brilliance of certain indie comics?