Joyce Brabner (March 1, 1952 – August 2, 2024) was an American writer of political comics and wife of Harvey Pekar; with whom she co-wrote the nonfiction graphic novel Our Cancer Year.
Brabner was born on March 1, 1952, and grew up "poor" in Wilmington, Delaware, in a household with six younger siblings. "[B]ooks were a source of sustenance" and she recalled "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 discovering 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. (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, with Watkins and Craig Dawson, of a Wilmington comic book (and theatrical costumes) store called Xanadu Comics & Collectables, Inc.
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.
Brabner recalled that she was:
"flying out to his [Pekar's] part of the country on other business, and decided to visit him, and the next day we decided to get married!"
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 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 recalled 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
"started cutting up some of his [Pekar's] old clothes and making little Harvey Pekar dolls; just like the Shroud of Turin, they were made with clothing actually worn by the author, like some holy relic. They were these odd collectibles, and I carried these ugly little dolls around at our first San Diego con together."
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." She still made them occasionally for charity auctions.
In 1990, Pekar was diagnosed with lymphoma, and Brabner became his full-time caretaker, evolving from providing hands-on physical care to full-scale emotional and logistical management of his life. She devoted herself completely to his care — managing the effects of chemotherapy, staying close through difficult nights, and suppressing her own distress so as not to upset him. Even after Pekar was declared cancer-free, his mental health worsened, with his bouts of depression sometimes intensifying into anxiety and paranoia.
In 1996, Brabner and Pekar became connected to a young girl, Danielle Batone, the eight-year-old daughter of a struggling local cartoonist. They became Danielle's foster parents in 1998, and Brabner spent the next years devoting herself to Danielle's upbringing. Danielle became a recurring character in American Splendor, alongside Pekar's diverse cast of family and friends.
In 2002, Pekar was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. Combined with the release of the American Splendor film in 2003, Brabner's responsibilities increased. Pekar experienced severe depressive episodes, accidental overdoses, and psychiatric hospitalizations, and Brabner took on a significant role in managing his care and access to him. She also sought to protect his ability to continue working by limiting how widely details of his condition were shared. That role carried through to Pekar's final overdose and death in 2010.
Following Pekar's death, Brabner played a central role in managing his literary estate and posthumous publications. In this role, Brabner oversaw four Pekar projects that were published: Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land (Harry N. Abrams, 2011), Huntington, West Virginia: "On the Fly" (Villard, 2011), Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (Hill & Wang, 2012), and Harvey Pekar's Cleveland (Zip Comics and Top Shelf Productions, 2012). Brabner, however, also blocked at least two projects from being published. Pekar (and illustrator Summer McClinton) had finished a book on American Marxist Louis Proyect tentatively called The Unrepentant Marxist (after Proyect's blog). In the works since 2008, the book was to be published by Random House. In 2012, after a conflict between Proyect and Brabner, Brabner announced that she would hold the book back indefinitely. Similarly, Brabner's dispute with illustrator Tara Seibel led to The Pekar Project (Smith Magazine, 2009–2010) not seeing print. Seibel, a Cleveland-based artist, had worked extensively with Pekar in the last two years of his life on The Pekar Project, a webcomic alternative to American Splendor, which featured new stories by Pekar illustrated by multiple artists in addition to Seibel. The New York Times reported that Brabner opposed Seibel's continued participation in the project as well as certain other posthumous works.
Brabner died on August 2, 2024, at the age of 72. The cause was cancer.
In addition to Pekar and American Splendor, Brabner worked with many of independent comics' highest-profile writers and artists.
Brabner edited Eclipse Comics' Real War Stories (2 issues, 1987, 1991), which brought Mike W. Barr, Steve Bissette, Brian Bolland, Paul Mavrides, Dean Motter, Denny O'Neil and John Totleben (among others) together on behalf of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and Citizen Soldier.