***

Run, do not walk, to buy the August 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly (#723; cover has banner headline, “One Shocking Summer”). It’s worth the cover price for "My Movie Year," a cartoon by Harvey Pekar. Harvey has been self-publishing a comic book, American Splendor for several years; this is his first-ever publication in a national magazine.

Harvey’s comic has been adapted to a movie (also titled "American Splendor"), which has won a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. I’ll admit that Harvey’s work is an acquired taste. The guy is almost as self-obsessed as I am — if they taxed the use of the first person personal pronoun, we’d both be poverty stricken.

However, this is a fine American tradition. Dates at least from Thoreau, who said that he wrote about himself because that was a subject he knew the most about. The tradition carries on into Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and others.

Harvey makes quite a point of reminding us he’s just a working stiff — he’s worked most of his life as a file clerk in a VA hospital. Granted, it’s a sort of "No Exit" kind of job, but it’s not quite the same as an assembly line worker or long shoreman.

I suppose I was just as much of working stiff, back when I worked in shipping & receiving, and tossed boxes most days. But, like Harvey, I always had my cultural interests to keep my mind active. Not sure "working stiff" is synonymous with "mindless drone", but that's the connotation that immediately occurs to me. Don’t have to read much of Mr. Pekar's work to realize he's far from a mindless drone.

As a rule, there’s not an over-riding plot to Harvey's comics. Just a guy commenting on life around him. I don"t buy all his comics — they’re best sipped, rather than gulped. However, I can strongly recommend the book Our Cancer Year, which details his battle with lymphoma.

The comic in Entertainment Weekly is a fine introduction to Harvey Pekar’s work. "My Movie Year" details the path from becoming a fledging comic writer to having his work adapted for the screen.

I give it three stars ***