A Quote by Harvey Pekar

There's no limitation on comics, nothing. From a logical standpoint, how can there be a limitation on comics? You can use any word in the dictionary. You can put them in any order you want to. You can use a vast variety of illustrating styles. People could do all sorts of things.
I like collecting comics, I like buying comics, I like looking at comics, but I also read comics on digital readers, so any way people read comics is fine with me. Digital is just helping people who might not necessarily have access to comics help them; that's great.
That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.
I never feel there's anything I can't do with comics. There are certain things in comics that you can't do in any other medium: for instance, in Mister Wonderful, Marshall's narration overlaps the events as they're going on. That would be difficult in film; you could blot speech out with a voiceover, but it wouldn't have the same effect. That's always of interest, to see what new things you can do in comics form.
When I was a kid, back in the '40s, I was a voracious comic book reader. And at that time, there was a lot of patriotism in the comics. They were called things like 'All-American Comics' or 'Star-Spangled Comics' or things like that. I decided to do a logo that was a parody of those comics, with 'American' as the first word.
Knowledge without know-how is sterile. We use the word academic in a pejorative sense to identify this limitation.
I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.
With comics, you can only really learn what you're doing wrong or what works best when you see your work published. I've been publishing comics since my 20s, and still, when I flip through any of my new comics, I still only see the things that I wish I'd done better. But that's how you learn, by seeing it.
I don't care how people read their comics, I want them to read comics. I don't care if they read them on an iPad or a phone or in store, I just want them to read comics.
I don't think comics use iconic forms - or they don't have to. But that makes them even more "cool," if I understand the idea. One has to be quite involved to make comics work. Signals have to be decoded on both the verbal and visual level, simultaneously, and the reader must do a lot of cognitive work between panels as well. Comics definitely need an engaged reader.
The magic of comics is that there are three people involved in any comic: There is whoever is writing it, and whoever is drawing it, and then there's whoever is reading it, because the really important things in comics are occurring in the panel gutters, they're occurring between panels as the person reading the comics is moving you through, is creating a film in their heads.
I was a voracious reader and I could never understand why comics were of any less merit or importance than any other way of writing. I think the thing that keeps me with comics is there's still so much to be done. There's still this huge unplowed field, this huge unexplored wilderness, and as long as I can keep doing new things and coming up with new things, I will.
Comics have the page as their real estate so you've only got that space to tell the story on. But the other thing only comics do is to have the words and pictures being simultaneous. Your brain is flicking between them and you can put in some excellent narrative devices; you can off-set things and juxtapose things between word and image.
I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting.
I live making comics. Comics is an industrial art but less suffering, because comics are for young people who are more adventurous. I do that. I live off comics, and then I write books, but when you want movies, you cannot make movies without money.
Isn't there any statute of limitation in things spiritual? I don't believe any large mind dwells on its sins, any more than on its virtues!
But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.
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