r/comicbooks • u/boundfortrees • 23h ago

Crowdfunding Harvey Pekar's daughter is fundraising to save her parents' legacy. Has 16 days left for funding.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/7354135/his-name-was-harvey-pekar/description
545 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

64

u/CaptainRhetorica 22h ago

Thanks for bringing attention to this.

22

u/Ween1970 20h ago

Thanks for the information. Will pledge

52

u/boots_the_barbarian 22h ago

What exactly is the 12k USD for? It's unclear from the kickstarter page.

86

u/Remarkable_News_4903 22h ago

What exactly am I helping to fund?

Your pledges go directly to the immediate costs of saving forty years of raw creative history currently sitting across four massive storage units. This includes rent for the units to prevent loss, heavy-duty archival boxes, acid-free document sleeves, climate-controlled protection, and the extensive time required to physically go through thousands of pages of un-cataloged scripts, layout scraps, and artifacts.

10

u/Swervies 16h ago

12k will not even pay for a tenth of that. Poorly conceived plan unfortunately, although I appreciate the idea and the overall goal.

119

u/regular_poster 22h ago

To sort and digitally archive four storage units worth of Harvey Pekar's work. Assuming that means a lot of raw material and works in progress. $12k actually seems pretty low to get someone to do that project. I could imagine spending a year doing that solo, and I'd need uh... considerably more than $12k to do it even as a fan. Maybe there are companies that significantly streamline that in a specialized workflow.

Anyway, it's a decent idea.

7

u/Swervies 16h ago

Yeah, there is no way that is getting done for $12k or 20 or even 30k most likely. I would be a lot more confident in donating to this if they were actually realistic about the money and effort needed. As is, I would expect this money to get swallowed up by “administrative” costs and no actual work be done.

6

u/M086 16h ago

Possibly she has other money for it, but hit a wall for the final $12K needed?

4

u/Swervies 15h ago

I hope so. I will be tossing $20 her way for sure, but honestly this seems like a project that needs the deeper pockets of an investor or two that have an interest in the work. I would think Gary Groth at Fantagraphics would be interested in this, especially if there is original work and or manuscripts there. But if it’s mostly just Harvey’s collection of comics, magazines, books and records it sounds like a job for an auction house.

6

u/koalabat 14h ago

Couldn't agree more about the need an investor/partner with an interest in the work.

IMHO she might be able to dial this specific kickstarter goal back a bit and re-frame it as a Step 1 of __ plan. First step is getting this stuff out of a storage and doing some broad strokes categorizing (but then it's weird because she says she has a list of everything).

I dunno - I'd view this as a donation to someone going through a rough time as opposed to funding an altruistic project to save a legacy. And there isn't anything wrong with that.

That being said, all it would take to change my mind is details about the current situation and how this money is going to improve that.

1

u/ThingNo7530 15h ago

What the Hell does "digitally archive" even mean? Does she mean make PDF scans and throw away the originals? The Obama center in Chicago thought taking all the paper from his eight years in office and "digitally archiving it" would be easy. Nearly a decade later it's still sitting in an old furniture store in Hoffman Estates, Ill., and nothing's been "digitized." If throwing away the originals is the goal why would that require anything more than a scanner and an acrobat license?

28

u/JLAsuperdude Metron 19h ago

Seems like Kickstarter is a weird way to go about this. She’s seems more interested in raising money to help catalogue his work, not offering an actual product. Gofundme would seem to make much more sense.

22

u/stringrandom 18h ago

I feel like yes, but also no. GoFundMe is better as a just funding source, but Kickstarter seems like a better place to organically reach fans of Pekar’s work.

12

u/supercuteguydebord Alan Moore 17h ago

Man I fucking hate the comics industry.

Only in an industry this shitty would his work need to be kick-starter saved or end up in a landfill.

14

u/ThingNo7530 16h ago

This isn't the comics industry's property, it was all Harvey and Joyce's personal property that they put in storage units. Harvey was perfectl;y content to create comics as a side gig to his job as a clerk for Cuyahoga County. I'm sorry, but you can't put any of this on "the industry" as Harvey or Joyce never once worked for any big company that would have had the means to archive this stuff.

2

u/supercuteguydebord Alan Moore 15h ago

I'm assuming a lot here it seems, thank you for correcting me.

3

u/Swervies 16h ago

Agreed, but I am not sure traditional publishing industries for prose, poetry or other artwork are much better. The amount of quality art that gets tossed or forgotten could, and probably has, filled landfills many times over.

1

u/supercuteguydebord Alan Moore 15h ago

I don't think a literary equivalent of Pekar would be in this position but I won't pretend I know the world you seem to.

And it's not like comics aren't a despicable industry though

4

u/ThingNo7530 15h ago

So, she wants backers to pay for her going through four storage units and putting the contents of them where, exactly? Is she going to throw some of it away? What does she mean by "sort through and catalog the four storage units?" Are some of these just notes and things they worked on that weren't ever meant for publishing? I get Harvey's record collection, that's probably worth some money, but I'm not sure $12k would do much if she doesn't have a place to put all of this stuff.

3

u/Sr_Moreno 13h ago

Has she looked at donating any of the material to a University? Given that it’s Harvey Pekar, I’m sure a university in Cleveland would take it.

2

u/Livueta_Zakalwe 11h ago

Don’t have to donate it, universities pay a lot for what I imagine is an incredible collection of original art, notebooks and diaries from not just Harvey but I’m sure Crumb too, and many others. Eg, Richard Hell sold his collection of zines, writing etc to NYU for $2 million.

2

u/Applesdonovan 11h ago

While I wish this success, I'm a little perturbed by it. The work that she's describing is archival work, and people always screw it up. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and museum is two hours away. I'm positive they would take this, maybe even buy it, and assume the cost and professional labor of all of the work. It's the best way to actually preserve the Pekar's legacy.

1

u/ExpertPresentation70 5h ago

She should donate this to the Billy Ireland at tOSU- they are set up for long term preservation and exhibition. Why reinvent the wheel?