Another comic-book hero movie

American Splendor

Starring Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis

Directed by Shari…

American Splendor

Starring Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis

Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini

“American Splendor” is one of many comic books recently turned into films. But it’s not “Spider-Man” or “X-Men.” It’s closer to “Ghost World.”

Early on, there’s a disclaimer. The real Harvey Pekar, the man whose life the film depicts, warns that his story doesn’t offer escapism and it’s not very amusing. But he’s wrong. The film is quite funny.

Pekar just wishes his bio was a bummer. Dropping in throughout the film to lend comment – a device one keeps expecting to go wrong that never does – the man himself refuses to characterize his life as anything but a drag or admit to any degree of success.

I think we can call him an antihero.

After a brief intro to Harvey as a child, trick-or-treating without a costume alongside kids dressed as comic book heroes like Batman and Superman, the film moves to dingy, permanently-overcast 1970s Cleveland, where he – his cinematic incarnation, played by Paul Giamatti – is just a regular guy, a loser even. He works as a file clerk in a VA hospital, lives in a filthy apartment and obsessive-compulsively collects comic books and jazz records. A nodule on his vocal cords is destroying his voice and he can’t keep a girlfriend.

That’s it. That’s Harvey.

His maladjustment is about to give birth to something, though – a popular underground comic book about his everyday life and how grueling he finds it to be. After an incident at a grocery store checkout leaves him particularly fired up, he spews the horrific details of “standing in line behind old Jewish ladies” onto a page. An acquaintance of his, R. Crumb, weirdo artist and subject of the excellent 1994 documentary “Crumb” – “they made a movie about him, too,” says Pekar in his narration – lends illustrations and “American Splendor” is born.

The film, simultaneously a biopic and adaptation of the comic, soon shifts focus to Harvey’s awkward romance – in which obsessive-compulsive disorder meets hypochondria, among other things – with Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis), a fan who hastily becomes his wife.

Giamatti, who’s been consistently memorable in small roles like “The Negotiator” and “Private Parts,” makes a superb leading man, carrying the film as an unlikely hero. The actor dives headlong into the character’s frump, going so far as to bear an uncanny resemblance to Crumb’s grotesque renderings of Pekar at times.

The discovery here is Judah Friedlander, who’s a riot as “genuine nerd” Toby Radloff, coworker of Harvey’s and briefly an ’80s MTV mascot. His spiel about what “Revenge of the Nerds” means to him is fall-down funny. I haven’t laughed so hard in months.

But by far the most remarkable accomplishment of co-writer-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, documentary filmmakers making an impressive feature debut, is getting the real Harvey involved and using his commentary in a way that actually brings you closer to the characters on screen. It’s a rare feat.

“American Splendor” opens in theaters Friday, Sept. 12.