On October 14th, a statue commemorating alternative comics godfather Harvey Pekar was unveiled at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Library in Cleveland, Ohio, an institution that was more than instrumental in his work.  The statue shows Pekar in a typical, shrugging stance, asking “Oy vey! What do you want from my life?” in Jiddish. The backdrop is a reproduction of one of the many quotable panels from his large body of work, the “Let there be light” of autobiographical comics : “Everybody’s life is potentially the story of a great book. A movie. Or a comic book.”
Meanwhile in the new High School of Art and Design building in New York, a glass-paneled mural by cartoonist Art Spiegelman was installed.  In the Art Newspaper, Spiegelman explained the piece as a reflection on the influence that an artist’s past has on his work, both thematically and technically.  Spiegelman is a graduate of the high school.
Photographs © 2012 Cleveland Live LLC, © 2012The New York Times Company, respectively
