A review by chelseamartinez
Best Of American Splendor by Harvey Pekar

5.0

At first I wasn't enjoying this one as much as other anthologies of the comic... I think this is because the structure has too many stories from the same period lumped up at the beginning, and thus too many of them have the same preface about Pekar needing to write more and more comics because of his health problems, inability to live off pension alone, and foster parenthood. Not to discount these things! And maybe they are at the beginning to give context to a person coming to the comics after seeing the movie (i'm one of those people but there was a 15-year stretch between seeing the movie and reading the comics... and this isn't the first compendium of his work that I have read). Anyhow, if you keep going the stories get more varied in theme and time period.

I think you get a better sense in this collection of how much Pekar has written about music and how knowledgeable he is.

My favorites were:
Ameritech
Peeling and Eating a Tangerine
Oh My Goodness!
Violation
A Story About a Review
Why I Haven't Visited the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
Inky Dies
Self Justification or Anticipating the Critics
Recycling
Candor
Cell Phones
Huckster
Interviewing the Interviewer
Danielle