Joyce Brabner
Joyce Brabner (born March 1, 1952) is an American writer of political comics and the widow of Harvey Pekar. Biography Brabner recalls "read[ing] comics when I was five or six years old – including Mad Magazine, her first exposure to political satire. Drifting away from comics as she grew older and discovered that "for the same amount of money I could get on the bus and go down to the library," she nevertheless remembered "a lot of what I'd read." Living "in Delaware working with people in prison, with kids in trouble," running a non-profit culture-based support program for inmates in the Delaware correctional system, Brabner was a founder and manager of "The Rondo Hatton Center for the Deforming Arts," a small theater space in Wilmington, Delaware. (Hatton played horror roles – The Creeper – in the early 1940s without makeup because he was severely disfigured by a glandular disease.) During this time, Brabner became friendly with "two sometime artists who were very involved in comic fandom", which "seemed like a lot of fun." Feeling burned out from "working with courts, with sexual abusers of children and so on," Brabner began working with Tom Watkins, who "was doing a lot of costumes for the Phil Seuling comic shows." Moonlighting "as a costumer while continuing to work in the prison programs [she] had organized on [her] own," while not spending much time at conventions or comic shops, she nevertheless eventually became co-owner of a comic book (and theatrical costumes) store herself. Her store stocked Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, but when the store "ran out of an issue" (one of Brabner's partners selling the last copy of American Splendor #6 without her getting a chance to read it), Brabner sent Pekar a postcard directly, asking for a copy, and the two "began to correspond." Developing a phone relationship, after a stay in the hospital by Brabner, Pekar spoke to her daily and sent her a collection of old records. Harvey Pekar Brabner recalls that she was: On their second date, they bought rings, and the third date they tied the knot. With the benefit of hindsight, she believes that it was Pekar's honesty that attracted her to him, crediting his work on "American Splendor [for giving her] a worm's-eye view of what his other marriages were like," allowing for a greater degree of understanding and openness between the two of them. It was Brabner's second marriage and Pekar's third. As Pekar's third wife, she has appeared as a character in many of his American Splendor stories, as well as helping package and publish the various iterations of the comic. Citing her "talent for publicity," Brabner recalls that American Splendor was losing money and decided (having "stopped working for the prison program") to engage in some "screwball publicity." Utilising her costume-making skills, she The gimmick worked, and they "picked up nine distributors for the book!" The comic began to be profitable, and one of Brabner's dolls "ended up on The David Letterman Show."