Knocking on Harvey’s Door

A conversation with Peter Kuper on his childhood encounters with comic legends Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb

This conversation is excerpted from The Funny Times Podcast, which explores the history of humor — and the relationships and stories the paper has cultivated over the past 40 years in print.

Peter Kuper, an acclaimed cartoonist whose work frequently appears in our pages, is also the co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated and the artist behind Spy vs. Spy. In this recent conversation with co-founder Ray Lesser, Kuper reflects on his life and career, sharing lively stories about his early friendships with underground comic legends Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb. Pekar, who was a fixture in the Funny Times offices in Cleveland, passed away in 2010.

 Here’s the excerpt:

How Peter Kuper crossed paths with Harvey Pekar

Ray: May of ‘89 was our first test issue. I interviewed Harvey Pekar for that issue and had a cartoon that R. Crumb did with Harvey in that issue. I got to go to Harvey’s apartment, which I had never been to before then. Then after that, Harvey would constantly come by Funny Times and try to convince us to do something or other. 

Peter: I met Harvey when I was 12 and he was a hospital worker. I was coming home from the drugstore with a bag of comics, and a newspaper boy saw me and said, “Oh, there’s a guy over there who has comics,” and pointed to his building and told me his name.

I went over, looked up the buzzer, rang it, and said, “I understand you have comics. Let me up.” It was as crazy as that.

And I went over and looked up the buzzer and I rang the buzzer, and said, “I understand you have comics. Let me up.” It was as crazy as that.

He was like “OK, buzz me up.” He was probably 28 and I was 12. And he welcomed me into his new apartment. He had a copy of Batman sitting on his coffee table for some reason. Then he walked me into the room where he had all his 78 RPM records and showed me a full-color original drawing by Crumb, an alternate cover to an issue called High Tone. It was a guy peeing into a toilet and his genital was sticking out. I had never seen anything like that in my life. I was completely knocked out.

How Kuper First Met R. Crumb

In 1970, Peter discovered the underground comics of R. Crumb and was instantly mesmerized.  One day his parents gave him a few boxes of 78 RPM records and told him that he could keep any money he made selling them. Kuper then describes the unexpected way that obsession led him to Crumb in real life. 

Peter: And so I’m sitting in the back of our house with these records out in the sun, one of them sitting out, slowly melting. And then this guy shows up, and he grabs the records and he runs into our house. He’s like, “Get me a phone book.” He runs into our house, puts a phone book on top of it to flatten it. I mean, “You just entered our house”, and he’s like “I’ll take them all.”

Ray: Was it Harvey?

Peter: No

Ray: Somebody else. OK.

Peter: So I looked up Harvey’s number and said, “Hi, Harvey. There’s this guy who wants to buy all the 78 RPM records.” He said, “Describe him to me.” I said, “He’s this height…” And he said, “Oh yeah, I know that guy. Don’t sell to him.”

Then he jumps into his car and drives straight over — like 10 minutes later, Harvey’s there. He goes through them and says, “Yeah, there are some good ones here. Good discs. I think Crumb would like some of these.”

So he took 15 records and I said “ I’ll make a deal with Crumb…I’ll trade him for a piece of artwork… and an interview.” 

13-Year-Old Peter Kuper Interviews R. Crumb

Peter: So in the interview — we asked questions like, “What are your hobbies?” — and he wrote: “taking drugs and f**king” and things like that.

Ray: What were you, 13 years old?

Peter: 12 or 13 years old, yes. Then we asked him to give us a rundown on the history of underground comics and gave him a big space, and he just wrote: “no.”

So what do we do?

I took the interview to my dad’s office and asked his secretary to type it up so we could print it in the magazine. She started reading it and said, “I won’t do it.” So I had to beg my mom to type it up — because [the secretary] was not going to type f**k five times.

“Yeah, I think you guys should quit taking comics so god d*mn seriously and get laid.” 

At the end of the interview, we were asking questions like, “Do you think comics should have a message?” And he wrote, “Yeah, it should say, ‘Hi, Ed, how’s your mom?’”

And the final question was, “Do you have any final closing?” He wrote, “Yeah, I think you guys should quit taking comics so god d*mn seriously and get laid.”

We were just scandalized. And he wrote it in big letters, too.

How Crumb inspired Peter to sketch

Peter: Crumb came through Cleveland again, staying at Harvey’s. And I did another trade with him. He came over to my house. We made another trade and he did the cover of our fanzine. 

While Crumb was working on the cover of our fanzine, I went over to Harvey’s to pick it up and he hadn’t started it. And I showed up after school and he said, “I’ll do it now.” 

And I was afraid he was going to not do it if I left. So I said, “I’ll wait.” 

And I sat there — super ballsy, embarrassed, embarrassingly ballsy, 14-year-old — and he did the artwork while I sat there. After about a half an hour of me staring at him, to entertain me, he gave me a sketchbook to look at. It was the most incredible experience. I was looking at him like, “Wait, this is all drawn directly in ink. Every page is filled up completely.” That kind of sent me on the way to working in my own sketchbook.

Peter remembers his friendship with Pekar

Ray: I can remember Harvey’s apartment is like going into a used bookstore. His apartment was just lined with shelves from the floor to the ceiling, books and records. And you have to move a pile of stuff off of the chair to sit down. 

Peter: I mean, he was such a wonderfully eccentric guy. 

And, you know, one of the things that was so great about being in the comics world, at the age of like 12 or 13, is that I’d be talking to adults and they would talk to you like you were an adult too. Harvey would read me some chain-mail letter with a potential girlfriend. I remember thinking, “There’s an adult reading me this love letter.”

It was very strange — but I was kind of digging it.

Peter describes his regerets about Pekar

Peter: Seth and I were doing a fanzine and showing it to Harvey. One of the artists we worked with was Gary Dunn. Seth and I were writing stories that Gary illustrated. I had the sneaking suspicion Harvey was thinking, “F**k these 13-year-olds writing stories and getting them drawn by somebody else. I could do that.”

So Harvey asked me if I would do one of the American Splendor stories.

Ray: He asked you to do one?

Peter: Yes, he showed me American Splendor. I got copies from him and he gave me a script. And it was two guys playing basketball and just talking. 

Ray: But that’s a lot of Harvey’s stories. 

Peter: I know. Absolutely. The pity of it was, I hated sports. 

I felt like it was going to be all this reference of basketballs and basketball hoops. And I’m like, they’re just talking. You know, there was no room for much visual anything. And I had in my own work done a lot of photography using photos. And I really wanted to break away from that. 

And so I passed. I really was passing on that story. And yeah, forgive me for that. 

Ray: He would never ask you again. 

Peter: He never asked me again. It wasn’t until we worked together about 20 years later on something for one of those books on The Beats that he wrote.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This conversation is an excerpt from The Funny Times Podcast, a series celebrating the 40th anniversary of Funny Times. Listen to the full conversation here: