Harvey Pekar tribute features a galaxy of Denver comic art stars

A young Harvey Pekar prepares for his close-up.

The Pekar tribute is an ongoing feature of the Scholars and Rogues website that started on October 8, 2010. That date would have been the Harvey's 71st birthday had he not died in early July. How this salute to a Cleveland-based writer came to be illustrated by a number of Denver cartoonists is best understood by knowing that the Scholars and Rogues website was born out of a chance meeting of minds at a Space Team Electra concert.

Scholars and Rogues staff cartoonist A.N. Cargo interprets Harvey Pekar.

Three of the five founding members of Scholars and Rogues live in Denver. The current staff roster includes eighteen writers that hale from all over the globe. According to Executive Editor Sam Smith, the website was founded in April 2007 as a political blog and very quickly gravitated to topics of cultural concern. It has now hit its stride with a story mix that digs beneath what everyone is saying to illustrate the dynamics that shape our communities.

S&R Managing Editor Mike Sheehan cites Harvey Pekar's 1980s appearances on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman as an early inspiration. In the 1987 clip featured below, Letterman actually looses his cool and scolds Pekar like a jilted prom queen...