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| How Harvey Pekar, Author of “American Splendor” Sees Us – American Comic on Macedonia
(Vest, 19.07.2006) - The underground comic-book writer and founder of self-biographic comic Harvey Pekar, known to us for his film “American Splendor,” has made a comic-novella, “Macedonia” together with comic artist Ed Piskor.
During the promotion of “American Splendor” Pekar met Heather Robinson, a Berkley student who worked on the theses of peace and conflict in the Balkans. Pekar saw her stay in Macedonia interesting so he ordered her thousands pages of notes and photographs and took upon himself to write a comic-novella that he named “Macedonia.” The focus of Robinson’s concern here was to understand how Macedonians survived the break-up of Yugoslavia without entering a civil war and neighbourly problems.
The 23-year-old comic artist who has collaborated with Pekar for two years, Piskor says he did not face many difficulties to conjure up Macedonia because he had photographs as the guidelines and the names of the buildings he was supposed to draw. He also used Google Images as support. Piskar says the comic mainly has dialogues of the main character (Heather) with locals, which take place in various indoors locations that do not differ much from those in the United States. Asked whether he would visit Macedonia anytime, Piskor answered that because of his philosophy of avoiding conflicts, he would most probably never managed here.
“American Splendor” was nominated for the Academy Awards for Adapted Script in 2003 and its author Pekar’s character was played by Paul Giamatti.
The comic is a 150-page paperbound book of Ballantine Publisher the publication od which is scheduled for this autumn. |
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