Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle at Wisconsin Book Festival: "I like gettin' those laughs"

There are few things short of a hot breakfast with extra-strong coffee that will get many Madison folks out of the house before 10 a.m. on a Saturday. One of those things is Harvey Pekar, the writer behind many influential underground comics, whose odd-yet-lovable personality--discovered by many in the award-winning 2003 film American Splendor--and incisive depictions of Cleveland have made him a cult hero.

Pekar has teamed up with pop-culture historian Paul Buhle as of late to create The Beats: A Graphic History and a graphic adaptation of Studs Terkel's Working, the latter of which the two authors discussed at the Wisconsin Book Festival, well before most people slurped down their French roast.

One fan after another filed into the Overture Center's Promenade Hall, dressed in Pekar's signature getup: the stocking cap, coffee in one hand and sketchpad in the other. By the time the event began there was an entire peanut gallery of Harvey look-alikes. This was fine and good to Buhle, who joked that he was half-expecting a crowd dressed in superhero outfits. Judging from their sensible fashion choices, he said, the discussion was bound to be a fruitful one.

It turned out he was right. Whereas Thursday night's event featuring Lorrie Moore and Michael Perry featured eye-rollers such as "Is your book set in Minnesota?" this crowd (which included fellow comic-art royalty Lynda Barry and Jim Danky) seemed much brainier. Questions revolved around Terkel's legacy, Pekar's process of distilling Terkel's oral-history classic into a narrative fit for illustration, and both authors' opinions on the trials and tribulations of the labor movement and the working class. Then again, maybe it was Madison's attempt to show Buhle that UW alums could give his students at Brown University (where he recently finished a teaching gig) a run for their money.

Perhaps the most impressive intellectual, though, was Pekar, who's never finished college but has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of topics ranging from jazz to baseball, not to mention a gift for observation and storytelling. Despite his autodidactic feats, he came off not as snobby but as a charming, mildly crotchety grandpa type--the kind who cracks jokes about popes, politicians, and Poles in one fell swoop.

As it turns out, that's always been part of the grand plan: Pekar made it very clear that humor's ability to "break up everybody" has appealed to him for as long as he can remember, and is a key to his storytelling technique as a writer.

"If I tell a funny story 50 times to one person, I get more laughs than telling it once to 50 people," he said. "I like gettin' those laughs. Oh, and a little money and praise ain't so bad either."