Harvey Pekar's American Splendor has been around since the mid-1970s, and it's one of those acclaimed indie books that I've studiously ignored over the years.

The title, and the bombastic logo, are of course ironic.  Pekar writes autobiographical stories about everyday events.  So far as the plot is concerned, they're generally rather mundane.  But that's the point; Pekar isn't really telling us stories so much as delivering observations about life.

Vertigo is now producing a four-issue miniseries in which, as always, Pekar writes stories for an assortment of artists to draw.  Of the four stories in here, two are simply wry two-page shorts.  The longer stories see Ty Templeton illustrating Pekar's reflections on his parents aging and death, and Dean Haspiel collaborating on a summary of what Pekar did one day.  No, really, that's pretty much the story.

It's an odd book.  Its strength lies in Pekar's willingness to be almost unbelievably mundane - he devotes half a page to the mechanics of paying his artists and the simple pleasure of finding out that the system at the bank is slightly simpler than he was expecting.  None of the events are, strictly speaking, interesting in themselves, but at his best Pekar captures everyday moments and details that are immediately recognisable.

On the other hand, while the details are excellent, the big picture is often less satisfying.  The longer stories peter out rather than end.  And some of the mechanics are downright clumsy - for example, to tell us that his parents were pleased about the creation of Israel, we get a panel with a narrative caption spelling it out, a map of Israel, and a drawing of Harvey's dad reading a newspaper with a story about Israel and saying "I'm so lucky that Israel was reborn during my lifetime." 

There are naively laboured moments like this scattered throughout the book, and I'm not quite sure whether they're downright irritating, or have an outsider-art charm.  At times Pekar is spelling out the action in a way that would have been fairly standard comic book storytelling thirty years ago, but now feels faintly anachronistic.

But the value of this book is in the details, and in its strangely awkward way, the details ring true on an unusually small scale.

Rating: A-

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