Comic Life

Harvey Pekar's gloom gave him an artist's vision of Cleveland, like a painter going through a lifelong gray period. "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff," went his credo, and his literary realist's eye not only transformed what was possible in comics, it captured a key part of our city's essence: our gritty, chip-on-the-shoulder perseverance. Pekar, who died in July at age 70, left behind almost 20 books. Here are three of his best.

American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar
(Ballantine Books, $20)
The best of Pekar's early work has collaborations with underground-comics legend R. Crumb, several stories and characters that inspired the 2003 biopic American Splendor.

The New American Splendor Anthology
(Four Walls Eight Windows, $19.95)
The collection of late '80s works includes his cranky, confrontational Late Night with David Letterman appearances, translated into comics form, and lots of Cleveland content.

The Quitter
(Vertigo, $12.99)
Pekar's autobiography covers his street-fighting teen years in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood to his earliest writing successes with illustrations by one of his best collaborators, Dean Haspiel.