Of course, Pekar's attitude isn't a reasoned proposal that there be such a niche, it's an outburst of depressive disgust that you even have to tell people there ought to be such a niche. This also means that the comics and the movie aren't just examples of naturalism; the subject of both is in part the choice of narrative genre, of naturalism over romance and melodrama. Pekar is a natural-born naturalist and this movie, at once a tribute to him, a documentary about him, and an illustration of his life and work, serves as a reprieve from the mass-marketed heroic conventions of big-movie entertainment.

Pekar does compact his observations in comic book frames, but he doesn't package them in the way we're used to. That's why his appearances on Letterman were so buggy and heated. The moviemakers generally don't recreate the Letterman appearances but show the actual footage, and Pekar is not like the usual talk show guest, desperate to seem in on the joke in order to peddle his wares more effectively. Pekar is (rightly) suspicious of Letterman's attitude toward him and hence combative. He picks a fight before Letterman has even begun to smarm him. The "magic" is that Pekar's combativeness makes him an even better butt for Letterman. He's so serious he can't sell himself at all. His prickliness is inseparable from his integrity, and he can't sell that, either, though it is a Hollywood trope. Selling it requires an assumption of dignity not in Pekar's repertoire. He's a permanent, rumpled drop-out, and it's fascinating to watch a movie catch a quality that isn't catchable by movies, or by what Pekar means by "Hollywood."

Pekar and Crumb are much less comfortable with their success, and the media distribution networks that have made it possible, than most Counterculture icons. It always feels compromising to them, as if they must have sold out if a lot of people like them. (They don't distinguish between selling and selling out.) James Urbaniak, who impersonates Crumb, is especially good at embodying this without "putting it over." He keeps his head down over his sketch pad to indicate that the main relationship is always with his work and that the audience and institutions of distribution are a baneful necessity to be tolerated. Even his slight drawl suggests his total skepticism about anything outside his work.

American Splendor treads tactfully around this, innovatively combining animation, documentary techniques (both period footage and current interviews with the real Pekar), and dramatic reenactments, but without losing the feel of entertainment. (Berman and Pulcini are a married couple whose previous works include such documentaries about Hollywood culture as Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's (1997) and The Young and the Dead (2002), which is about the transformation of the bankrupt Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, where such celebrities as Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks, Paul Muni, Bugsy Siegel, and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer are buried, into the interactive, "sexy," and profitable (which is the sexiest thing of all in Southern California) Hollywood Forever.) American Splendor is a good time without being coarse or obvious and the casual handling of Pekar's relationship with Crumb is especially good. Crumb's disappearance from Pekar's Cleveland life and Pekar's resultant loneliness is conveyed in a beautifully simple fade.