“From Off the Streets of Cleveland,” as the kicker on his American Splendor comic books proclaimed, came legendary realistic memoirist Harvey Pekar.

Pekar was a Beat Generation-aged guy who didn’t find his career niche until the late ’70s. But that’s a gross overgeneralization, something Pekar always refused to do.

Pekar’s roots were in stuff that’s relatively timeless—jazz music, modern lit, the architecture of urban neighborhoods, the subtle emotions of everyday working-class life. He was not a man of fads, fashions, or flash. He was a man out of time, outside the publishing industry’s notions of marketability.

He found his breakthrough concept through lifelong friend Robert Crumb, who had discovered his own breakout shtick as the cartooning idol of a flower-power subculture he’d despised. Pekar would write stories that Crumb would draw. These strips grew into a full-length comic book, which Pekar self-published in annual installments, with a growing corps of illustrator-collaborators.

These comics were sold through comic book stores in “direct market” fashion. Pekar put up his own money to print them. Stores put up their own money to carry them (no consignments or returns).

In a few years, Pekar had become one of the biggest stars in the tiny world of alt-comix. He kept putting out the work on a steady schedule. He maintained a high standard in both his writing and in his collaborators’ artwork.

Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi has argued that no great cartooning is ever writer-centered; that an artist’s visual imagination must be at the core of anything in the genre. Pekar regularly disproved that. The American Splendor books always carried a strong visual flair in their dialogue-heavy panels.

That’s because Pekar, as his own publisher/editor/art director, kept a paternalistic but tight tein on his hired hands. The art in his books was always realistic, always based on the minute details of faces, clothes, and poses. Employing a variety of drawing partners in each volume only confirmed the degree to which American Splendor’s vision was Pekar’s.

Pekar never sought fame. Nor did he openly decry it. He went on the Letterman show during a network technicians’ strike wearing a pro-strikers T shirt, as a simple statement of workers’ solidarity. He used his latter-day brand image to promote the work of other writers and artists, and to discuss the big stuff that pertains to the little stuff (recession economics, Jewish identity). By staying in his realm, he remained true to his self.