Author, biographer, and music critic Harvey Pekar passed away July 12 at age 70. He wanted people to know that everyone deals with the same basic issues:

Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't.

He was mainly known for his "American Splendor" series of comics, which took a look at "life on the street" in people's everyday events. Pekar's comic was largely about himself, from interesting conversations heard on a bus ride to working at a veterans' affairs  hospital. A key to his popularity was his friendship to comics artist Robert Crumb, who drew several of Pekar's stories and passed the comic to other artists who would each draw chapters of Pekar's life, such as his ordeal with cancer in "Our Cancer Year." His life as of 2003 was adapted into an "American Splendor" movie starring Paul Giamatti, and is an excellent introduction into his idiosyncratic world.

The important thing to Pekar seemed to be that people knew "the word on the street" from everyday folks. His own daily life in "Another Day" sticks to how he makes a living and gets along in general. It should serve as no surprise, then, that he adapted populist Studs Terkel's account of working people, "Working."

Jazz music was one of Pekar's passions in life, and he did a lot of music criticism in addition to his comics. He has chapters in "The Miles Davis Reader" and "The Show I'll Never Forget" about his love of jazz, which is also chronicled in "American Splendor" in the form of an enormous vinyl collection he must constantly whittle down to clear space and appease his wife, Joyce Brabner.

Brabner's enthusiasm for activism led to an expansion in the kinds of people Pekar wrote about. "Unsung Hero," "Ego & Hubris," and "Students For A Democratic Society" reflect his biographical style of storytelling used on subjects under circumstances more extraordinary than Pekar's Cleveland lifestyle. He was also the first guest editor for the Best American Comics series in 2006.

Linked below is a gallery of the many faces of Pekar as drawn by a multitude of artists. They drive home the effect of reading "American Splendor": discovering no shortage of perspectives for studying people.