Joyce Brabner

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.)

Although Merkle had only budgeted for a black and white comic, Brabner felt strongly "that color was necessary if they were going to reach the kids", preferably with "popular artists and writers," but "realized with the integrity and honesty the undergrounds had." Brabner, Merkle and the CCCO managed to find a publisher willing to split the costs of printing, were given "some grant funding" and found some creators willing to defer their pay. After publication, the CCCO took on the responsibility of distributing the comic – Real War Stories – including getting copies "into some schools [where] they were used in classrooms".

Warner Books "was interested in the project from the beginning," thinking that they could be involved from the start in a book on the Iran-Contra affair, which could, says Brabner, have been "as big as Watergate." Caution overtook enthusiasm, however, when "it became clear that this story was a lot bigger than everybody thought it was." Although thoroughly scrutinised – and Brabner says that she "was told at the time by Warner's attorneys that our sources were solid and our book would fly" – she believes that Warner "realized this wasn't going to be the enormous trial, or victory, they thought it would be." Ultimately, Brought to Light was published solely by Eclipse.

Indeed, in the Stephen R. Bissette/Stanley Wiater-edited Comic Book Rebels, the editors draw a distinction between Pekar's stories – which are "primarily by himself and about himself" — and Brabner, who "uses her own experiences to frame broader investigative narratives about America, and the impact our social, political, and military institutions have upon not only ourselves, but the world."

She helped finish and publish two of Pekar's posthumously published works, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland (Zip Comics/Top Shelf 2012) and Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 2014). Also anticipated is another posthumous comic book from Pekar, other autobiography by Brabner, and new work with Danielle Batone.

In addition, Brabner's nonfiction comic book Second Avenue Caper: When Goodfellas, Divas, and Dealers Plotted Against the Plague won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award. Illustrated by Mark Zingarelli and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the book was published in 2014 by Hill & Wang. With Pekar, she co-authored and appeared as herself in an opera performed by Real Time Opera in January 2009. The event was broadcast on the Internet from Oberlin College on January 31, 2009.

She and Pekar later published work in Jason Rodriguez's "Postcards" series, as well as an anthology (with Pekar, Ed Piskor and others) called The Beats (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

Brabner was portrayed by actress Hope Davis in the film adaptation of American Splendor (2003), and also appeared as herself in some scenes. Davis's performance was met with critical acclaim, and she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.

In 1995, Brabner and Pekar shared a Harvey Award (named after cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman) for Our Cancer Year. In 2011, Brabner was awarded an Inkpot Award in recognition of her work in comics.

She has also written Activists! and the PETA-supported Animal Rights Comics, as well as working on Strip AIDS and a book called Cambodia, USA. In 1994, Pekar and Brabner collaborated with artist Frank Stack on the Harvey Award-winning graphic novel, Our Cancer Year. Our Cancer Year was, according to Brabner planned to be 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 takes the reader through Pekar's struggles with lymphoma, as well as serving as a social commentary on events of that year, and was, says Brabner, written "together from our different points of view, in the different way we experienced Harvey's illness."

Brabner, talking in the early 1990s, described the difficulties involved in "publish[ing] non-fiction, public interest comics," which entail "go[ing] outside the world of comic book publishing," and often relying on "grant money." Even with funding in place, however, she described the difficulty in finding "a publisher willing to take on a reprinting of the Martin Luther King comic Al Capp Studios packaged [Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story]," which was cited as an inspiration by one of the four students who began the February 1960 "non-violent sit-in demonstration" in Greensboro, North Carolina. Brabner refers to this event as particularly highlighting "the historical role of comics in social and political arenas," and (with American Splendor) "play[ing] a vital role in Joyce's decision to build upon her work in prisons and schools, to apply the medium to controversial investigative ventures." Together, and separately, Pekar and Brabner "have [both] tenaciously pursued a path dedicated to the truths of the human condition, contrary to the lurid escapist fantasies that fuel the main engines of the comic book industry."

In the early 1990s, Brabner and Pekar became guardians of a young girl, Danielle Batone when she was nine years old. Danielle became a recurring character in American Splendor, alongside Pekar's diverse cast of family and friends.

Her writing on Brought to Light with Alan Moore and artist Bill Sienkiewicz brought critical praise from both the artistic and activist communities. Originally a joint publishing venture between Eclipse Comics and Warner Books, the 1989 graphic novel flip book Brought to Light dealt in part with the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the Iran–Contra affair. The impetus behind Brought to Light was the involvement of the Christic Institute ("a public-interest legal firm, best known at that time for its work on the Karen Silkwood case") in a case "involving the bombing of a press conference in Costa Rica." Survivors of the bombing who had investigated "found," says Brabner "it involved much broader issues involving covert operations [and] possible swaps of drugs for arms."

Lou Ann Merkle, "an art student and activist living in Cleveland" began working with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, a "military and draft counseling organization" and sought out Pekar for advice on the costs involved in creating a comic. Seeking "a tool to reach teenagers with information about the military" in the face of the peacetime draft and what she saw as an "aggressive recruiting campaign" (aided by the release of Top Gun in 1986). Brabner recalls that Merkle was looking for some "counterpropaganda, a way of presenting some of the things the recruiters weren't telling the kids about the draft," including the stories of "veterans and people from El Salvador."

Joyce Brabner (born March 1, 1952) is a writer of political comics and the widow of Harvey Pekar.