The best cure for an awful movie is to see a good one

To make up for the self-inflicted torture of watching Freddy vs. Jason (at least I was seeing it with people I liked), I saw American Splendor — the biography of great comic book author Harvey Pekar — with my friend Anne on Friday.

(Friday was a busy night — first the Hawksley Workman secret concert, then American Splendor, then running into my friend Lori and getting hooked up for some future accordion jazz stuff, then dancing with the girls from the Empire Sandy. Interesting stories all, and I suppose they’ll eventually get blogged.)

Paul Giamatti played an amazing Harvey, and well, Hope Davis is one of my indie film dream dates. The movie captures the spirit of Pekar’s autobiographical comics of his everyday life in Cleveland, Ohio, which take the incredibly banal and turn it into something incredibly interesting. Today’s “alternative comics” — by alternative, I mean the ones that cover quotidian life as opposed to superheroes or detectives — owe Harvey Pekar a big debt.

Recommended reading

Wouldn’t ya know it, Harvey Pekar has a blog. As does his wife Joyce and his daughter Danielle.

You may have seen the movie, but you should read the comics that inspired it!