Trivia / American Splendor

• Approval of God: In the "My Movie Year" comic, Harvey praised the casting and performances of Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis. He also praised James Urbaniak's performance as Robert Crumb, saying that Urbaniak did very well at capturing Crumb's "warm, understanding, and helpful" side.
• Executive Meddling: The rights to Harvey's writing defaulted to Joyce Brabner upon his passing, and so far she has refused to release Harvey's collaborations with artist Tara Siebel, or his graphic novel about Marxist blogger Louis Proyect, due to disputes.
• Money, Dear Boy: Harvey's appearances on Late Night With David Letterman were always based on Letterman paying him to come into New York City, even if Harvey ended up being scheduled off. He even turned down a chance to be on Oprah because they wouldn't pay him to do it. However, there is a justification: Unlike their other guests, Harvey is not rich, and had a day job that he would need to take days off from to do the shows.
• Posthumous Credit:
  • Four of Harvey's graphic novels were released after his death: Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, Huntington, West Virginia: "On the Fly", Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, and Harvey Pekar's Cleveland.
  • His very last story, "Harvey Pekar meets The Thing", ran in Marvel Comics' Strange Tales II five months after his passing.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Joyce Brabner refuses to allow Louis Proyect to serialize Harvey's unreleased graphic novel about him on his blog.
• Vaporware: After Harvey's death, there were announcements made about two posthumous releases of Harvey's collaborations with Joyce Brabner, The Big Book of Marriage and Harvey and Joyce Plumb the Depths of Depression, as well as a collection of the webcomics done for The Pekar Project. However, as of 2022 these books have not been released.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Discussed in Our Movie Year, when Harvey discusses the people interested in making an American Splendor movie throughout the years.
    • Jonathan Demme showed interest in 1980, but wasn't a big enough name at the time to make it work.
    • Not long after that, producer Alan Sacks (of Chico and the Man and Welcome Back, Kotter) tried to get a sitcom made, but couldn't raise the money.
    • An unidentified producer offered to film video adaptations of American Splendor stories for cable television, but Harvey declined, saying that there wasn't much money to be made from cable at the time.
    • Bernt Capra optioned it in the 1990s as a possible vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio^note Which may not have been as far-fetched as it sounds; Harvey knew Leo's father George through the underground comics scene, and Capra had worked with Leo on What's Eating Gilbert Grape, but that didn't come through either. At one point, Capra connected with Rob Schneider, who expressed interest in playing Harvey, but that also fell through.
  • Harvey's death put the kibosh on The Unrepentant Marxist, a completed graphic novel written by Harvey (and illustrated by Summer McClinton) about Louis Proyect, due to a spat between Proyect and Harvey's widow.
• Write Who You Know: Since it's autobiographical, many of Harvey's friends, family, and co-workers are used in the comic at several points. This includes his wife Joyce Brabner and his friend Toby Radloff.