Process XVII

"Hello, Cleveland."
Alters #4
(Aftershock Comics, 2017)

We’re reading the Paul Jenkins/Leila Leiz comic Alters for class this week, the third notable comic to take place in Cleveland, Ohio, after American Splendor and Howard the Duck. It is also notable in that the protagonist is a trans woman superhero, named Chalice.

Last week we took in the Iceman comics which delved into his life as a gay man, which was queer as in strange (as they say.) It is often an odd fit when an long-established character is rewritten to have a sexual orientation contrary to previous expectations.

So, yeah. We’ve moved onto queer superheroes. When I was a teenager, reading X-Men was in its full flower, working as an aggressively overwrought metaphor for any marginalized group. This came to its obvious conclusion in the X2 when (coincidentally) Bobby “Iceman” Drake reveals to his parents as being a mutant. The metaphor is played for comedy.

His mother asks, “Have you tried ... not being a mutant?”

In the Iceman comics he has to come out to them a second time, this time as gay. No more symbolism, this is attempting to reflect the real life experience.

Alters had the advantage of starting fresh, a new “universe” with a different power dynamic between superpowered humans, which I enjoyed more. In spite of its unique and sympathetic protagonist, and leans harder into the lives of marginalized people - not only trans, but disabled, homeless, people of color - it still falls into a several traps, including a queer-coded arch villain and the cringey depiction of a single black mother anmed Sharise.

Is she realistic, are there people like Sharise? I guess. But knowing it comes from the mind of a white, male writer, the situation and vernacular were a little difficult to take.

And then there’s the Cleveland thing. Just as Steve Gerber, who never visited Cleveland, chose our hometown as the setting for the adventures of Howard the Duck, the British-born Jenkins made this Chalice’s home without really knowing anything about it. Where the hell is “the city center”? The least bit of research could have made it more believable. As it is, Cleveland is simply a stand-in for “Not New York.”

As for me, I am spending this weekend creating a twelve-panel comic adapted from my short play The Negative Zone, which takes place in a comic book shop in the mid 1980s.

The Venice Diaries (1991)

First floor apartment on Elkgrove Circle

For two months in spring, 1991, I lived in Los Angeles. That’s it, that’s the longest I have ever lived anywhere that is not in Ohio. I was basically a squatter, sleeping on a couch in Venice. My best friend from college and his best friend from high school had an apartment on a cul-de-sac, and my best friend’s best friend was supposedly moving out soon and I’d take his room but I didn’t even last that long.

In spite of the fact that I never found a job, and in spite of the fact that I never made any new acquaintances, and in spite of the fact that I was only there, as I said, for two months, I managed to keep very busy. Early on I determined that if I was to survive, in a mental-health sense, I would not eat fast food, I would not drink before sunset, and I would not watch any television alone.

Thank goodness, this was before the internet.

Also, shortly after I arrived, a small cohort of Cleveland expats took to driving to the Santa Monica Mountains every single day at 6:30 AM to hike and run in the hills. After, those of us without regular work would get coffee at the Rose and spy on stars and other writers.

This is what I thought worth writing down.

April 5, 1991 Within an hour of moving into Rich and Adam's place I visited an L.A. emergency room after popping the nail off my left big toe in what can only be described as a freak domestic accident.

April 10, 1991 I spotted Christopher Mulkey from "Twin Peaks" at the Rose Cafe!

April 11, 1991 Apparently Chris Mulkey stops in at the Rose every morning.

April 17, 1991 I applied for work at three different places today; two restaurants and a strip mall bookstore.

April 19, 1991 We went to the apartment of some friend of Adam’s to watch the Holyfield vs. Foreman fight.

April 20, 1991 Betsy, Rich and I went to see "American Splendor" at Theatre Theater, starring Dan Castellaneta and Siobhan Fallon. Understudies went on for both Dan Castellaneta and Siobhan Fallon.

April 21, 1991 A couple of us went see "The Object of Desire." We’ve seen three movies this week and they all have that song by Enya.

April 22, 1991 Elvis Costello is going on tour, and we waited in line at Tower Records to get tickets for the show at the Wiltern on May 26th. Betsy convinced me to buy a half-dozen tickets, that we'll be able to convince more people to come with us.

April 23, 1991 I had a dinner date with a friend from high school at some chain Mexican restaurant.

April 25, 1991 I had a mad impulse to return home to visit my ex-girlfriend because I heard she was seeing someone else. I found round-trip tickets to Cleveland in the L.A. Times and bought them with cash from some guy in El Segundo.

April 27, 1991 Rich and I stalked a site where Aidan Quinn and Isabella Rossellini are making a movie. Quinn paced the parking lot, smoking constantly. He’s not very tall. Rossellini stayed in her trailer until it was time for the shoot, and then walked past us very fast.

April 28, 1991 We headed to the Third Street Promenade for a date with that same high school friend and her roommate. We met at a bar that only sells frozen alcoholic beverages, a “squishy” bar. After, we all went back to our apartment for a couple hours of small talk when I finally said, "Ok, it's late. If you're not staying we need to walk you back to your car.” We walked them back to their car.

May 8, 1991 One of Rich’s co-workers attends Santa Monica College and needed assistance with an in-class performance that takes place in a max museum. I stood in one place for 10 minutes, with a mask on my face, dressed as a Canadian Mountie, in a Mountie's hat and a wool Mountie coat, while she ran her hands over my motionless body. I sweat a lot and almost fell over.

May 11, 1991 Rich, Adam and I created a short film on video in which he prepared to ask a woman out on a date, only he really was asking a woman out on a date, someone he’s met at the local video store. Where the film went depended on whether she says yes or no. She said no, so the film ended with Rich taking off all of his clothes while walking down Fourth Street.

May 12, 1991 We discovered the porn flick, "Still the Brat," which is hysterical.

May 13, 1991 Pete works in a record store, and after work he brought over "Mighty Like A Rose" which will be released tomorrow. About four songs in I started to doze off.

May 14, 1991 We’re thinking of starting a newsletter to send to our friends back home called "Notes from L.A." I completed an article called "The Nowhere Generation," my first Gen X manifesto. I showed it to Rich but he says he doesn't see the point.

May 15, 1991 Tomorrow, Rich is supposed to take his final exam to be a server at T.G.I.Friday’s. Apparently, everyone cheats on the exam but he doesn’t think that’s right. Unfortunately, he doesn’t drink and doesn’t know or much care how different alcohols are different, which makes the drinks part of the test impossible.

May 16, 1991 Rich failed his final exam at T.G.I.Friday's.

May 17, 1991 We went out with some friends from Athens who came back to our place and wouldn’t leave. I have totally not gotten used to the time change and always feel like it’s three hours later than it actually is. Of course, I also got up at six o’clock this morning.

May 18, 1991 We went to this place at the beach for framed posters. Rich got Béatrice Dalle, I got Isabella Rossellini.

May 20, 1991 Rich and I moved furniture for Victoria Williams. She is a folk musician who was on Carson a few weeks ago, and Rich had met her when she last passed through Cleveland.

May 23, 1991 I stayed up late to watch “The Moderns” for the first time. I didn’t like it as much as I thought I was going to based on the soundtrack. In the morning I’m flying home to spend the weekend with my ex-girlfriend. I'm going to miss the Elvis show. No one wanted those extra tickets.

June 2, 1991 Back in L.A. Drew a nude portrait of my ex-girlfriend from memory. I think it's really good. Actually, we're dating again.

June 4, 1991 Rich and I are driving back home tomorrow. Tonight, Adam and I met Gary Marshall. He was hosting the final exam films of the Masters class in Film making at USC. Adam and I had a bet as to whether Penny Marshall was his sister or his daughter, and we walked with him to the parking garage asked him about it. I lost the bet.

SNL Oct. 8, 2016

American Splendor

Sitting on the stoop in front of Tommy's Restaurant,
now the location of Mac's Backs Paperbacks.
Harvey Lawrence Pekar (October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was born in Cleveland, to Polish immigrant parents. He graduated from Shaker Heights High in 1957 and after a stint in the U.S. Navy settled in Cleveland Heights eventually gaining regular employment as a file clerk at the V.A. Hospital. His legend, however, is as a writer, of jazz criticism and as the creator of his autobiographic comic book American Splendor.

In 1962 Pekar met Robert Crumb, who at that time was an illustrator for American Greetings. They had a mutual admiration for all things jazz, and Crumb introduced Harvey to "underground" comics. Pekar had abandoned superhero comic books as a teenager, but Crumb opened his mind to all of the different stories could be told through the medium. When he decided to reach out and attempt his own work, Pekar first contacted Crumb to be an illustrator.

He self-published American Splendor #1 in 1976. And the cover is correct, Crumb only did a two-pager.

For those familiar with his later work, which concentrates almost exclusively on his day-to-day life with wife Joyce Brabner and their child Danielle, the premiere issue is a little dizzying. Longer pieces like How I Spent My Summer Vacation: 1972 and Love Story (Summer 1946) tell the story of Harvey surrogates "Marv" and "Herbie" and their entirely unedited sexual exploits. One image might even be punishable as child pornography. Only one story (not including the cover) where Pekar explains how he roped Crumb into assisting him on this adventure depicts Harvey by name as himself.

Depictions of Black people and women (lots of naked tits) would also raise a few eyebrows ... but not if you were already familiar with the work of Crumb and his contemporaries. It was par for the course in the 1970s. Looking at his later work, I would almost guess that Harvey felt he was supposed to "go there" to be part of the underground comics scene, but I would hesitate to give any closer analysis than that, other to say it's a bold first issue, and it must have taken a heap of courage for someone like Pekar to take some many of his personal thoughts and shove them out there as if to say, "This is what I think, this is who I am, take it or leave it."

And that, after all, is what everyone who loves him loves about him.

The most poignant story is Remembering Be-Ins which takes place in the not-too-distant future. Two teenagers approach the balding, 70 year-old "Mr. Shapiro" and ask him what life was like way back in the far-out 1960s.

That's right. It says, Summer, 2010. Crazy.

Source:
American Splendor
cleveland.com

The City

The Cleveland-based comic strip artist Derf announced yesterday that, "Cleveland Scene dumped my strip." This says little about his talent or popularity (which are great) or his penchant for controversy (which are legend.) It does speak volumes about the state of print journalism.

I remember those grand, heady days of the late 1990s, when both the Free Times (assimilated by Scene a few years ago) and Cleveland Scene were as thick as phone books with ads and content. Of course, they were both kicking the crap out of each other, hemorrhaging cash in the battle to dominate the free weekly market. But it was fun for the readers (especially when they chose to dump on each other) and made Cleveland feel like a place where things were actually happening.

If you haven't picked up a Scene in sometime, and of course most people haven't (no swipe at Scene in particular, I mean really, it's made out of paper) you will sigh at how thin it is, and you don't even need to open it to know most of its weight is dedicated to the advertisement of sex work.

Not, as they say, as if there is anything wrong with that.

So cutting the last cartoon from the paper (as Derf reports, there used to be six) should surprise no one.

Except, of course, that we are talking about The City.

"The City" by Derf

I have been reading Derf's work (real name: John Backderf ... if that is his real name) pretty much since the strip began in the pages of the Cleveland Edition back in the year 1990. One of my favorite strips arrived shortly after I moved to Cleveland Heights, and describes the long-nightmare of a West Sider losing his way during a drive to visit someone on the East Side.

The protagonist is horrified by the sight of minorities, confounded by the arcane traffic patterns, and his desiccated corpse is discovered months later, still inside his parked car (which is now festooned with Cleveland Heights parking tickets) with a note reading, "I wish I could have one more slice of Player's pizza."

The original hangs in a frame at Players on Madison.

The City continues to be published in many national magazines, and one of the things I have always enjoyed is the fact that "The City" isn't some generic city, it has always been Cleveland, and he never changed that to accommodate different markets. He would create special, full-page illustrations for the covers of the Edition, Free Times and Scene dealing with local issues, but the familiarity of the strip itself gave me a warm feeling, knowing my town was being shared with the world.

How "my town" will cope when the strip about itself is no longer available on its streets is a question. First, the loss of American Splendor, and now this.

In one of the solo works I will be presenting in April (and any subject is really about me, isn't it?) the character of Pengo is a flailing cartoonist. His professional journey follows its own path, one which is a shadow of mine. Pengo has some success as an underground cartoonist, even becoming art director for the Free Times in the mid-1990s, which features his syndicated strip called Angst.

"Angst" by Cat Kenney

You know what say about imitation. Sucks that they cut you, Derf. But I think I know who will be publishing longer.

UPDATE 8/29/2011: " Attention Clevelandites! My comic strip THE CITY will debut in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Monday, Sept. 12." - Derf

Howard the Duck (comic book)

Howard the Duck changed my life, but I never realized in what way nor how much until I began to re-read them this week. My entire childhood was colored by my exposure to this Marvel comic book, the way I spoke, the way I wrote. This was not necessarily a good thing, I do not recommend letting anyone under high school age read this comic book. I began when I was only nine.

Back up ... Howard the Duck is known to most as a terrible film produced by George Lucas from the mid-1980s. I won't bother going into that. The character debuted in 1973 in Marvel's pulp title Adventure Into Fear, a minor character originally written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Clevelander Val Mayerik. He resurfaced in a few issues of Man-Thing before landing in his own title in 1976.

Prior to Giant Size Man-Thing #4 (an annual) this duck, from a world Gerber never gave a name (though later writers formally named it Duckworld, which is irritating because we don't call Earth People Planet) where ducks are the dominant life-form is summoned with others to a nexus in the cosmos to fight some evil entity, whatever. Trying to get home, he is accidentally dropped on Earth, in the city of Cleveland.

Why did I become attached to this comic at such an early age? My brother was reading Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four (we were strictly a Marvel home — always the underdogs, we Hansens) I was trying to find a storyline that I could own. A talking, sarcastic duck? In Cleveland? Sweet! The fact is, I didn't understand half of it, and therein lies the problem.

As conceived by Gerber, this book was pure satire, or parody. Depended on the issue. The villains were a mash-up of pathetic professional types empowered with bizarre and punny abilities. A lot of them are artists. The night watchman who can't get a book published is possessed by a turnip from space — the man, locked in his head wants an outlet for his imagination, the root vegetable from outer space (just writing that makes me smile) wants to know the pleasures of the flesh. Every issue, Howard encounters a character like that, and has to deal with it, often rising to heroism he did not know he had.

Because Howard is a curmudgeon. A cigar-chomping misanthrope who just wants to go home, and is stuck in 1970s Cleveland, the only city at that time worse off than New York City. But even Cleveland is not Cleveland. I cannot find any evidence that Gerber ever lived here, or even spent any time here (he died in 2008) — but original HTD artist Val Mayerik did, even once creating work for Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. But an advertisement for a martial arts course in issue #3 prominently lists the address as the corner of "Oak" and "Elm." Either Gerber was crossing his fingers, hoping Cleveland, like most cities, has streets bearing these names that intersect (we do not) or he didn't care. Cleveland, like everything in this comic, is a symbol for something else. Howard had to end up somewhere unsexy. Cleveland it is.

The main problem with my reading it at such a young age was that I did not understand what was being commented upon. An evil wizard accountant? Becoming a candidate for President for the All Night Party? I acquired a language for sarcasm and acidity without having anything to direct it at. Howard disdains hypocrisy, fads and fashion, rude people ... but his constant barrage of attitude against these mundane evils just struck this child as being disgruntled, and that, to me, equaled funny. I missed Howard's compassion, his acts of kindness — he's a good guy, he's just sick of everybody's shit.

The first issue of Howard the Duck debuted in 1976. So did the first issue of American Splendor. Discuss.

My last Harvey Pekar story

Two years ago, Joyce Brabner and I collaborated on an event at the Unitarian Church, which featured a staged reading of a play I was working on about HUAC, and a talk from Harvey about a book he was working on about Joe McCarthy. Joyce was working overtime to keep Harvey’s spirits up, as he had recently fallen into a deep funk.

We ran into each other at Tommy’s around that time, Joyce with Harvey, and me with my two kids. We decided to get a table together and Joyce and I discussed logistics of the event, while Harvey could not stop talking to the boy.  My son was about three and a half at the time. Harvey just kept checking in with him, asking him questions.

I wasn’t used to seeing Harvey smile so much. His voice was very soft, and sweet, especially for him. I understand now he’s like that around children. I had no idea.

The second-to-last time I spoke with him, Harvey was at the library (of course) and I asked him about my project. Could he recommend any 1930s era labor rights books I might be unaware of? On that day, he looked at me like I was a stranger, like I wanted something from him. Maybe he was in thought and just didn’t want to be bothered, who knows. He said it wasn’t really his era and I thought that was that. As I walked away, he called me back and recommended the works of Ruth McKenney. It just so happened my wife already had a copy of Industrial Valley, and I started making my way through that two weeks ago (distracted by certain period playscripts.)

Last Thursday, my wife had water aerobics at the pool and the whole family went to splash around while she got her exercise in. It was only as the pool was closing that we walked past Joyce and Harvey, also headed out. Joyce stopped to chat and Harvey went to the gate to sit. She explained that Harvey had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. This would be his third go-round with cancer. Then she got a call, and told me see you later.

I could have just waved to Harvey, but I wanted to speak to him. The boy was with me. I went over and thanked him for the Ruth McKenney recommendation, and that put a smile on his face, but not as much as the boy did, standing shyly behind my right leg. I asked if Harvey remembered him, and if he remembered Harvey. They had a brief exchange. And we went.

I got word about the death of Harvey Pekar yesterday as I was checking Facebook while I was at the library downtown. So, it wasn’t entirely out of the blue, but still stunning. We weren’t friends or co-workers or peers. I always found it awkward having any kind of conversation with Harvey. But his work has had a strong impact on me. I could not have written my two solo plays without the early influence of American Splendor. In fact, reaching back there were an awful lot of pieces I wrote for Guerrilla Theater Co. and other productions which were due to his philosophy of storytelling.

And he has been one of the many reasons I have been proud to call Cleveland Heights my home.

I had to take the kids to the pool yesterday afternoon for swimming lessons. I asked the boy if he remembered the nice old man we saw the last time we were there, just because I wanted to say something out loud about Harvey. The boy said he did, and I didn’t think anything else about it. At dinner that night my wife and I were talking about the news and the kids wanted an explanation, so I began telling them why he was important to me.

“He wrote comic books about his own life,” I explained, “about his ordinary life, and what he thought about things, and his relationships with other people.”

“But that’s not a comic book,” the boy said.

Critic.

When I went on to say that he was very sick, and that he had died, the boy was surprised. And then he was overwhelmed. And then he blurted out, “I wanted to see him again!” And then he cried for about ten minutes.

My kids know about death. They know about the death of their brother. We have had incidents with certain animals. But this was the first time he was struck by the finality of death. My boy likes repetition, he likes to play games he has played before, and watch shows he has seen before, and to see people he has seen before. And earlier I had reminded him of that nice old man, and that made him want to see him again.

Harvey Pekar has been an inspiration to me. And he is a man with whom I never had a satisfying conversation. But my strongest memory of Harvey will always be as that nice old man whose face lit up when he looked at my son, and that my son wishes he could see him again.