silkcuts's American Splendor: Another Day #1 - Volume 1 review

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    "Another Day"

    Just another day in the life of Harvey Pekar.  He people's champion I have refereed to him in past reviews.  American Splendor: Another Day is an Vertigo release install meant to the American Splendor anthology series.  Like any anthology you can just jump into it.  You can read any of the American Splendor series before you read this, there really no stopping the reading order, this book is self contained.
     
    The book's strongest feature if that Harvey writes to the strength of the Artist featured in the story.  The story could be only a few pages, but the story is focused and the artist is appropriate. Harvey Pekar has spent a lot of his mature life fine tuning his craft and only after the movie has he found stability in his writing career.  So when Harvey picks an artist, he knows what he wants from that artist.
     
    Dean Haspiel has become my Harvey Pekar artist.  First time I have seen Dean illustrate a story for Harvey was the Quitter.  Dean and Harvey have a chemistry.   The cover of the trade paperback was done by Dean and he just give Harvey as certain human life that is so appealing for me in this comic series.  Ty Templeton I met in a convention in Toronto and he was the one who turned me onto the American Splendor series, the conviction he had for Harvey (Who was still a live at the time) was appealing and reading this book I can see why Ty enjoyed recording the life of a guy like Harvey.  I looked forward to Leonardo Manco's art because I loved his work on Hellblazer.  Richard Corben's art is so signatured it was so nice to see him as well create art for Harvey's life.  Eddie Campbell's illustrations took me off guard the most.  Eddie Campbell is the creator of the autobiographical Alec series, so he knows mundane.  It is just weird not seeing Alec, but Harvey.  
     
    What is nice about this book compared to the other Vertigo American Splendor: Another Dollar is that this book works more like an introduction book.  There are a lot of random stories, but we can relate to them because a lot of them are normal everyday things.  Then there are stories we don't relate to, those are the stories to develop a relationship between Harvey and the new readers.  The book was full of comedic moments and dramatic everyday events, it is an honest event of daily life.  Harvey can make fixing a toilet exciting.
     
    Cheers!
    - Silkcuts

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