The Pekar Project, a collaboration between the late Harvey Pekar and four different artists that began in 2009 and first appeared as a series of Web comics on the Smith magazine site, may not be included in the first wave of posthumous publications written by Harvey Pekar who succumbed to cancer in July (see “Harvey Pekar, RIP”).  In an article in Sunday’s New York Times, Dave Itzkoff reports that tensions between Pekar’s wife Joyce Brabner and Tara Seibel, a 37-year-old artist who worked on The Pekar Project are creating problems for the publication of the collection.  Sources, who did not want to speak for attribution, told the Times that Brabner “would not allow the book to be published if it included Ms. Seibel’s contributions.”

There are however, plenty of other Harvey Pekar penned volumes apparently headed for publication including a graphic novel called Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland illustrated by Joseph Remnant, which is due out from a new imprint Zip Comics.  Random House has two Pekar volumes in the works, Huntington, West Virginia, On the Fly about Harvey’s adventures promoting the American Splendor movie in coal country, and Harvey and Joyce’s Big Book of Marriage.  Farrar, Strauss & Giroux is publishing Not the Israel My Parents Promised, illustrated by J.T. Waldman, and in the fall of 2011 Abrams ComicArts is releasing Yiddishkeit (see “Harvey Pekar’s Last Book”).