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Post by Administrator on Oct 30, 2005 14:48:22 GMT -5
The Quitter By Harvey Pekar & Dean Haspiel (Vertigo) www.dccomics.com/vertigoWith countless American Splendor comics, not to mention the 2003 award-winning movie, chronicling Harvey Pekar's adult life, for his latest book Pekar turns his gaze on his early years in The Quitter. What's been true his whole career remains true in The Quitter: no sentimentalizing. Pekar lays bare his childhood and adolescence in the '30s and '40s of Cleveland, one of going out for sports but quitting once discouraged. Eventually young Pekar discovers he's good at beating up neighborhood kids and builds a reputation off of that. Not quite the childhood you'd expect from the file clerk Paul Giamatti played in the movie. There's not a lot of narrative flair to Pekar's writing, not much clever dialogue, nor formative structure. It's just a guy telling his life story, creating his own beats and rhythms like his jazz heroes. Dean Haspiel totally knocks one out of the park with his art here, bringing to life the rundown Cleveland that where Pekar grew up. Haspiel's angular, thick art has a sense of energy to it that makes the book as much his as Pekar's. By working with an artist like Haspiel and mining the rich territory of adolescence, Pekar has produced one of his best and most engaging works in a while.
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