Pekar's cancer treatment and suffering will take your breath away, but there's a happy ending and the book (and their marriage) is distinguished by Brabner's great tenderness and determination in the middle of Pekar's medical nightmare. Brabner, a self-described 'comic book journalist,' had to oversee both the new house and a sick and very difficult husband.

By the time the disease was discovered, the couple was in the midst of buying a house (a tremendous worry to Pekar, who fretted about both the money and corruptions of bourgeois creature comforts). In 1990, Pekar was diagnosed with lymphoma and needed chemotherapy.

In a contemporaneous review, Publishers Weekly described the book this way: Co-author Brabner described it as a 'book about activism and cancer and being married and buying a house, about being sick at a time when we feel the whole world is sick.' It was, says Brabner, written 'together from our different points of view, in the different way we experienced Harvey's illness.' Published in 1994 by Four Walls Eight Windows, Our Cancer Year (an offshoot of the cult favorite comic book series American Splendor) relates the story of Pekar's harrowing yet successful treatment struggle to overcome lymphoma, as well as serving as a social commentary on events of that year. Our Cancer Year is a nonfiction graphic novel written by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner and illustrated by Frank Stack. Harvey Award for best original graphic novel, 1995 Let's get you inside first.' Art by Frank Stack. Harvey has collapsed in the snow in front of their house.

Harvey pekar our cancer year