"There hasn't been enough change in comics to suit me. I don't know why exactly"
About this Quote
Restless dissatisfaction was basically Harvey Pekar's native language, and that shrugging complaint about comics carries his whole aesthetic in miniature: picky, plainspoken, allergic to hype. Pekar wasn’t a superhero guy, and he didn’t pretend to be. He came up through the underground and then built American Splendor out of the stuff most comics treated as unprintable: wage work, bad moods, petty humiliations, the slow grind of Cleveland. So when he says there hasn’t been enough change, he’s not lobbying for flashier capes or sleeker continuity. He’s calling out a medium that keeps reinventing its costumes while protecting its comfort zones.
The line “I don’t know why exactly” is the tell. Pekar is performing suspicion toward his own certainty, refusing the neat manifesto. That self-doubt is also a jab at the way comics culture loves declarative takes: the hot new “revolution,” the definitive “era,” the press-release language of progress. Pekar’s version of criticism is messier and more honest. He’s not sure whether the problem is publishers, readers, market incentives, or the medium’s ingrained taste for fantasy over observation. He just knows the temperature in the room hasn’t dropped.
Context matters: Pekar spent decades watching comics oscillate between corporate stagnation and boutique breakthroughs, with “change” often meaning new packaging for the same power structures. His frustration isn’t nostalgia; it’s a demand that comics risk something deeper: different lives on the page, different rhythms, different stakes. The quote lands because it’s both a complaint and a diagnosis of creative ecosystems that confuse motion with transformation.
The line “I don’t know why exactly” is the tell. Pekar is performing suspicion toward his own certainty, refusing the neat manifesto. That self-doubt is also a jab at the way comics culture loves declarative takes: the hot new “revolution,” the definitive “era,” the press-release language of progress. Pekar’s version of criticism is messier and more honest. He’s not sure whether the problem is publishers, readers, market incentives, or the medium’s ingrained taste for fantasy over observation. He just knows the temperature in the room hasn’t dropped.
Context matters: Pekar spent decades watching comics oscillate between corporate stagnation and boutique breakthroughs, with “change” often meaning new packaging for the same power structures. His frustration isn’t nostalgia; it’s a demand that comics risk something deeper: different lives on the page, different rhythms, different stakes. The quote lands because it’s both a complaint and a diagnosis of creative ecosystems that confuse motion with transformation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Change |
|---|
More Quotes by Harvey
Add to List
