# Harvey Pekar - Why Was He Famous?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvey-pekar-why-was-he-famous/547836>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [July 24, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvey-pekar-why-was-he-famous/547836 "2010-07-24T14:45:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2010, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harvey-pekar-why-was-he-famous/547836/21 "2010-07-25T22:31:19Z")

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> [@Freudian\_Slit](#):
>
> I read one issue of American Splendor, but just didn’t really find it all that great. The whole angle of “ordinary working guy” just didn’t strike me as original. Just seems like a cliche to create something from the POV of an average, lower middle class person. Is the new thing meant to be that the creator in this case actually was an average person in many respects?

He started doing it 34 years ago, long before it was “cliche”. And he was excellent at it.

As **Cliffy** said, he was an artist who produced a brilliant body of work. He was an underground comic artist on par with R. Crumb, and if you knew me, you’d know that’s extremely high praise.

The whole “slice of life” approach to comics is passe to some folks precisely because so many other artists explicitly imitated Pekar, among a couple of others.

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