Hi. My name is Tara Seibel and I bet you’re wondering how I wound up working with Harvey. My husband spotted an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Harvey Pekar was going to be speaking at Lakeland College about The Quitter, his new graphic novel. When I got there, all seats were taken except for the one next to Harvey so I asked if I could sit next to him. He said “Sure, take a seat.” I started to chat his head off and even made our man chuckle. I think he was impressed with how much I knew about him and American Splendor. He asked where I live and what I do, so I told him I was an illustrator who just moved back into town from Chicago. He said, “Oh yeah? I could take a look at your work and maybe hook you up.” So he wrote his number on a copy of a Funny Times paper and told me to call him.

A week later, trying to think of an excuse to ring Harvey, I remembered somebody at that event asked why he stayed in Cleveland. I made a comic out of Harvey’s answer called “Lake View Cemetery” (click image on right to read). Then I called to tell him I had some work to show him and asked him out to lunch. He answered, in his trademark rasp, “Naw naw, just come on over, I’ll give you a piece of cake. And we’ll get to work.” He loved “Lake View Cemetery” and I was thrilled. He liked my use of color, was intrigued by my fine arts background which he said gave me a “unique no-preconceptions approach to comics,” and started giving me a bunch of stories to illustrate.

I labeled our collaborations Rock City Comix (Terminally Ill) with Cleveland’s Terminal Tower in the logo. Harvey dug what we were doing and called Dean Haspiel, his artist on The Quitter and also editor of SMITH’s Next-Door Neighbor series, and asked, “Hey maybe there’s something me and Tara could do for that SMITH magazine thing, you know, online or whatever.” So Dean called SMITH comics editor Jeff Newelt aka JahFurry, who also edits the backpage comics for HEEB Magazine. Jeff immediately had us whip up a strip for HEEB’s politics issue entitled “Are God’s Children Too Stupid” and the seeds for The Pekar Project on SMITH were sewn. Harvey and I also did stories, separately, for SMITH’s Next-Door Neighbor series, “The Next-Door Neighbor I Don’t Know” and “Vestibule,” respectively.

So, with the help of Jeff’s vision The Rock City strip bloomed into The Pekar Project, a larger production adding in some other terrific artists to the team — Rick Parker, Sean Pryor, Joseph Remnant. Ever since I bumped into Harvey it’s been sort of a magic carpet ride smack into the comics world. Special thanks to Dean, Jeff and Larry for getting this project off the ground. Hope you enjoy and let us know what you think in the comments section!