Gerry Shamray (born c. February 19, 1957 in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

artist known for his work on

Harvey Pekar Harvey Lawrence Pekar (; October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical ''American Splendor'' comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a ...

's autobiographical comic book series ''

American Splendor ''American Splendor'' is a series of autobiographical comic books written by Harvey Pekar and drawn by a variety of artists. The first issue was published in 1976 and the last one in September 2008, with publication occurring at irregular interva ...

'' and the syndicated

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

'' John Darling''. Shamray attended

Cuyahoga Community College Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) is a public community college in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Founded in 1963, it is the oldest and largest public community college within the state. Tri-C schedules on the semester basis, and offers over 1,000 co ...

from 1975 to 1977, and the

Cooper School of Art The Cooper School of Art was a private art college located in Cleveland, Ohio. The school emphasized education and career preparation for the commercial art market. It operated from 1924 until 1981. Overview The Cooper School of Art featured a ...

from 1977 to 1980 (when he graduated).Shamray entry
Lambiek's ''Comiclopedia''. Accessed March 2, 2019. While at the Cooper School, Shamray was contacted by Pekar about illustrating his work. Shamray illustrated stories in every issue of ''American Splendor'' from 1979 to 1983, as well as a few later stories. In an introduction to a compilation of Pekar's work,

Robert Crumb Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...

stated that Shamray "went all the way, taking hundreds of photos of Pekar, his wife, his apartment, the streets of his neighborhood, and so on, and drew from the photos." During the period he was working on ''American Splendor'', Shamray drew caricatures of notable Clevelanders for the comic strip ''Cleveland'', which appeared in the ''

Cleveland Press The ''Cleveland Press'' was a daily American newspaper published in Cleveland, Ohio from November 2, 1878, through June 17, 1982. From 1928 to 1966, the paper's editor was Louis B. Seltzer. Known for many years as one of the country's most in ...

''. From 1985 to 1990, Shamray was the artist of the

Tom Batiuk Thomas Martin Batiuk (born March 14, 1947) is an American comic strip creator, best known for his long-running newspaper strip ''Funky Winkerbean''. Career Born in Akron, Ohio, Batiuk attended Kent State University, from which he graduated in ...

-created comic strip, '' John Darling'', replacing original artist Tom Armstrong. (He had previously illustrated a few weeks of Batiuk's strip ''

Funky Winkerbean ''Funky Winkerbean'' is an American comic strip by Tom Batiuk. Distributed by North America Syndicate, a division of King Features Syndicate, it appears in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. While Batiuk was a 23-year-old middle school art tea ...

''). Beginning in 1988, Shamray was on staff as a graphics editor at the

Sun Newspapers Sun Newspapers was formed as a chain of weekly newspapers serving Northeast Ohio. Prior to a major reorganization in 2013, the chain consisted of 11 weekly newspapers serving 49 different communities in Greater Cleveland. The papers are focused ...

in the

Greater Cleveland The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census results, the five-county ...

area for more than 20 years. While there, he developed, designed and edited the chain's weekly entertainment supplement, ''Weekend''.

References

External links

*
"Harvey and Me,"
reminisce about Pekar by Shamray Living people American Splendor artists American comics creators 1958 births {{comics-artist-stub