R. Crumb's Despair is Cleveland's "Coventry"



KK-253 Despair T-shirt
www.kotapparel.com
R. Crumb

The recent purchase of this Despair T-shirt sparked a conversation with the Cleveland born customer about the neighborhood which R. Crumb depicted here. The neighborhood he said has "Coventry" in Cleveland Heights and the building pictured with the diamond shaped windows was once a bar called The Pepper Pot.

Despair, Unused cover, 1970
R. Crumb

During the 1960's the area evolved into Cleveland's version of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury, complete with "Hippies" and "Hell's Angels". Robert Crumb moved to Cleveland in the early 60's and worked for awhile for The American Greetings card company. Later in the era he would meet Harvey Pekar, of American Splendor fame, at a swap meet where they where both looking for old Jazz Records.

By this time Crumb had become a part of the underground comix scene and Pekar was inspired by his work. He had always wanted to do something creative, but since he did not see himself as having any artistic talent he thought the graphic novel media might work for him. He could write the stories and others could illustrate.

Pekar's "American Splendor" a self-published biographical comic book series came to light in 1976. Harvey would draw the stories with stick figures and dialog, then pass to artists like Crumb to illustrate. He wrote about his daily life in Coventry, about his neighborhood's character, about his work place and about the street corner philosophers of which he was one.