Page 45 Review by Stephen
Second Vertigo volume of anecdotal autobiography, in which Pekar gets his hair cut, goes to hospital, visits the dentist and gets someone in to organise his record collection, then proceeds to offer you the benefit of his wisdom:
"Wow, a hardworking, humane, knowledgeable barber. And you can take that to the bank."
"If you don't correct stuff right when it happens, you can get into serious trouble. Stay on it."
It's beginning to grate on me.
Don't get me wrong, Harvey's often right and if you're anything like me you'll empathises with a lot of the day-to-day struggles. But the tendency to pronounce judgement to camera is a little patronising at times, and whilst David Heatley's and Jeffrey Brown's books are the height of economy, packed with tiny panels that still show you everything you need to see, there's an occasional element of over-indulgence here which is at odds with what's required for the flow of the story. Still, hats off to Darick Robertson for some seriously spot-on portraits, rich in fine detail, whilst David Lapham nails the fecklessness of the sad lad who pesters Harvey into letting him visit, but who has never read his comics and has absolutely nothing to say for himself except that his life sucks. It doesn't, but it will with a whingeing attitude like that. There's also some sound advice about not blowing your gasket, and a trip to Chicago which is prime Pekar: a shopping list of what he liked, what he disliked, what worried him and how he coped, all chased off with a fond farewell.
