Harvey Pekar

In 1976, Harvey Pekar brought a real breakthrough in American comics: his 'American Splendor', a comic featuring Pekar's stories drawn by several artists such as R. Crumb, Joe Zabel, G. Budgett and Gary Dumm, brought unflinching realism into comics. Harvey Pekar billed this book as coming "from off the streets of Cleveland" and that's the kind of stories readers got - no bombast in either tag lines or narratives, no romanticizing of either sex or violence.

As one reviewer put it, "Pekar is like the Lenny Bruce of comix. Often funny, sometimes poignant, but always truthful in a medium that mostly specializes in fiction." Pekar's 'American Splendor' has been made into a movie which has been awarded on several occasions.