Cleveland news: Proposal for statue of Comics legend Harvey Pekar

Photo credit: Lonnie Timmons III, The Plain Dealer

There aren't many people from Cleveland who can typically be described as legendary.  That's a name typically reserved for actors, musicians, perhaps some politicians, inventors...but usually not comic book writers.

Well, Harvey Pekar certainly deserves to be ranked among the legends of the comic book medium, right up there with Crumb.  There's no way I can adequately describe his work or its impact on the comic book medium, so you should probably take a look at his decent entry in Wikipedia.


Thankfully, his widow, Joyce Brabner, has finally decided to start a project to raise funds to erect a statue of Harvey.  The plan is to build the statue on or near Harvey's grave (he's buried near Eliot Ness), with the back of the statue made of slate so people can draw their own panels.

She prefers to raise the funds through lots of individual donations, rather than it being funded by a single source, to represent Harvey's "everyman" egalitarian attitude.

The funding will likely be through a Kickstarter program.  Hopefully I'll soon be able to provide an actual link for the funding.  If this goes through, I will definitely be one of the first people donating.