The final installment of the San Jose Public Library series "Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel" will take place Sunday, May 31. The topic will be Joann Sfar's "The Rabbi's Cat," with guest speaker Mary Salzman of SJSU. The discussion will take place from 2-4 p.m. at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, 150 E. San Fernando St., San Jose. For more information, contact Deborah Eistreicher at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or (408) 808-2357.

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Chari Pere, a 23-year-old Modern Orthodox cartoonist who did the art for the fabulous three-page comic "Unmasked" (which I wrote about in my first blog entry for j.), was named one of New York Jewish Week's "36 Under 36" on Wednesday. If you haven't seen "Unmasked" or any of Chari's other comix - including her ongoing comic strip "Of Biblical Proportions" - do check them out!

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Last weekend I went down to San Jose for the discussion of Harvey Pekar's "The Quitter" at the San Jose Public Library. I'm really glad I did; otherwise, I might never have been introduced to this great book.

You can count me in the group of people who thought Harvey Pekar, the nebbishy, downtrodden star of the classic underground comic series "American Splendor," was a born loser. I mean, the guy was played by Paul Giamatti in the movie about his life, and if any character of Paul Giamatti's hasn't been called "shlubby" in at least one review, I'll be shocked.

So I was pretty surprised to read "The Quitter" and learn that Harvey (the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland) actually had a lot going for him early in life - he was a great athlete, a good student (he had a photographic memory), popular and respected among his peers.

How did he turn into the kvetchy file clerk of "American Splendor"? By quitting. Despite his potential, Harvey's serious psychological hangups about failure won out, and the focus of "The Quitter" is how he quit (almost) everything that he could have been great in - the football team, college, the Navy and so on.

The discussion we had in San Jose was really interesting. Victoria Harrison, the coordinator of Jewish studies at San Jose State, led the group of some 20-odd people, and showed us a bunch of slides from the book that we all discussed in relation to the immigrant experience, family dynamics and the fear of failure. It was a great talk!

The series is sponsored by Nextbook and the ALA. The final part of the five-part series will take place May 31 and will discuss "The Rabbi's Cat" by Joann Sfar (more info at the beginning of this entry). J. has done two articles about Sfar, a French cartoonist.

I highly recommend checking out "The Quitter" - the art, done by cartoonist Dean Haspiel, is quite good, and Harvey's story is funny, sad and very thought-provoking. If you think you knew Harvey Pekar, read this book!

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Comix Friday is published in the Art Scene blog every Friday, and focuses on Jewish comic artists and Jewish-themed comix. If you know of anything I should be blogging about in Comix Friday, let me know!