| The Perry Bible Fellowship | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Nicholas Gurewitch |
| Website | http://pbfcomics.com/ |
| Current status / schedule | Updated in 2011 |
| Launch date | 2001 |
The Perry Bible Fellowship (or PBF) is a newspaper comic strip and webcomic by Nicholas Gurewitch. It originated in the Syracuse University newspaper The Daily Orange. The comics are usually three or four panels long, and are generally characterized by the juxtaposition of whimsical childlike imagery or fantasy with morbid, sudden or unexpected surreal humor. Common subjects include irony, religion, sexuality, war, science fiction, suicide, violence, and death.
The comic received its title, taken from the name of a church in Maine, in its Daily Orange incarnation.[1]
Contents |
The art in PBF varies constantly. While some comics feature simplistic human figures with little more than a mouth and eyes for a face, other strips are extensively colored and meticulously detailed. Sometimes, the artistic style changes within the strip itself. A recurring feature of the strip are simplistically-drawn human figures exhibiting little detail or realism, and heads reminiscent of smiley faces. Some strips emulate the styles of famous illustrators such as Shel Silverstein, Edward Gorey, and Robert Crumb, made evident by marginal notes such as "(Apologies, R. Crumb)."[2] Gurewitch is also known for including Easter eggs in various strips.[3]
Gurewitch has received multiple major awards for The Perry Bible Fellowship, such as the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic in 2005[4] and 2006.[5] The Perry Bible Fellowship has also won the Web Cartoonist's Choice Award for outstanding comic in 2006 and 2007. In total, PBF has received eight Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in various categories.[6] Most recently, Gurewitch won the 2007 Harvey Award for "Best Online Comics Work." In July 2008, Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories won an Eisner Award.[7]
PBF was once updated weekly on Sundays to correspond with its "Biblical" title. According to the official website, it appeared in 21 newspapers, five magazines and five school papers. These included the Baltimore City Paper Philadelphia City Paper, New York Press, The Chicago Reader, the Metro Times, The Guardian, The Portland Mercury, City Newspaper (in Rochester, NY), the Ottawa Xpress, Buffalo Beast and Black & White. PBF also appeared in Maxim and ION Magazine.[8] It appeared sporadically in The South End in 2005.
On August 1, 2006, after several months on a temporary site managed by Cheston Gasik, the comic moved to its permanent Internet home at pbfcomics.com.
On February 18, 2008, Nicholas Gurewitch announced he was cutting back on the production of the comic strip, saying "I feel I owe it to myself and the Perry Bible Fellowship not to turn a joyful diversion into a long career."[9] Previously a weekly strip, it went on an indefinite hiatus and was infrequently updated. Prior to September 27, 2010, the last update to the strip was July 22, 2008, in a strip that Gurewitch said offered "an overt message perhaps. That sometimes Life can pigeonhole a person. That's something I personally believe is a danger."[10]
Nicholas Gurewitch was born March 9, 1982, in Canandaigua, New York,[11] and is currently based in Rochester, New York. He attended Syracuse University, where he studied film and where his comic strip was first published in The Daily Orange. Besides PBF, he worked on developing a program called Daisy Garden Story Time with Comedy Central, though the program was not produced.[12]
Perry Bible Fellowship comics and an interview with Gurewitch were included in Ted Rall's Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists in July 2006.
A book collection, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, is currently available for purchase. Even before its release, preorders alone made the book one of the fastest-selling graphic novels on Amazon.com, causing publisher Dark Horse Comics to increase its first print run to 36,000, and print the book domestically to hasten distribution; it has since gone into three printings.[13] Dark Horse Comics also noted the comic's popularity in the UK, as Diamond UK put in the largest order Dark Horse has ever seen from them.[14]
The second book, The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack, is a 256-page hardcover compilation, featuring more comics (including the ones from the previous book) and previously unreleased material including unused strips, an interview with David Malki and a foreword by Diablo Cody.[15] The book was released on February 18, 2009,[16] again from Dark Horse Comics.
"Skub" is a fictional product based on a PBF comic strip.[17]
The comic strip portrays two people bearing shirts "pro-skub" and "anti-skub" who ultimately fight due to each others' stance on this product, with the final panel bearing an image of a container of Skub. Skub itself is portrayed as a container of cream similar to hair wax. The insignificance of Skub is the basis of the comic's joke, which arises from the fact that people become aggressively oppositional for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Skub has become an internet meme seen on numerous websites and chat forums such as YTMND.
