Style, Voice, and Authorship in Harvey Pekar’s (Auto) (Bio)Graphical Comics

Abstract

By considering Harvey Pekar’s role as author of the American Splendor comics alongside the activities of Robert Crumb and his other illustrators (with specific reference to Val Mayerik and Carole Sobocinski), I argue that the structural position of “author” is at least sometimes occupied by both author and artists in comics. Such a conclusion clarifies the nature of the author function in the medium of comics, as well as helping to articulate the bivocal or heteroglossic nature of the comics form. The implications of the dual visual and textual modes of authorship available in comics, I suggest, offer a possible explanation for the autobiographical trend in recent comics which are both written and drawn by the same person.

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