The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories

For fans of the online comic The Perry Bible Fellowship, this book will hold nothing new. This book is an archive of previously published comics. Yet if you are a fan, you'll no doubt be delighted with rehashing these old comics, as its biting, clever humor will catch you off guard again and again.
A great staple of PBF humor is the "things are not quite what they seem" reveal: everything looks sweet and innocent until the final panel, where we see that something dark and/or morbid has happened.

The art is very well drawn, and the colorful images often contrast with dark humor. Sometimes the artist borrows from other styles to parody them. It is amazing how well the artist can mimic styles like Edward Gorey.

If you have a dark sense of show more humor, this book is for you. show less

I hadn't really thought about Nicholas Gurewitch's venerable comic The Perry Bible Fellowship for years until I was doing some weeding of excess books on my comics shelf and pulled this one out I'd picked up at some point from some library book sale. While first appearing in various print publications, I think Gurewitch's work is best known for being some of the earlier and more influential viral webcomics, shared around from Gurewitch's website to become prototypical examples of this era of internet humor. Here we have the origin of the term "weeaboo," for example. How did these comics hold up the better part of two decades later?

They are definitely exemplative of the times, I think, reminding me of a Gary Larson freed from all show more editorial constraints and working in wild absurdities and lush colors while characters often remain blank simplistic blobs. Gurewitch works mostly in irony, juxtaposing cutesy childish whimsy with darkly comic subversions of expectation, which I feel was the dominant mode of humor online for a decade or so, not unlike the kind of stuff you could get printed on a black shirt with white text. Jokes based on comedic voyeurism are a common theme, as are the humorous demise of small animals Much of the staying power of the comics is Gurewitch’s art, I feel, with its depth and detail adding interest to even a joke based on a simple pun or idiom taken literally or just the idea of a hammer getting cheated on by a screwdriver.

I muse about how such "web original" books and our relationship to the internet has changed at Harris' Tome Corner here. show less

Most of the book is just reprinting strips from the web, but it's still a blast to read. I've read nearly everything in this book and it still makes me laugh. Several strips I needed to read multiple times before I got the joke, but once I did, it's hilarious. There's a section at the end of strips he's rejected for various reasons, and while I mostly agree with his reasons for rejecting them, a couple are laugh-out-loud funny.

More sex and nudity than I recalled, though, so I might have some trouble adding it to my teen collection as planned. The characters aren't realistically drawn, so it might not be a problem.

This collection of Gurewitch's award winning comic, The Perry Bible Fellowship, is hilarious, absurd, dark, and somewhat demented. Highly imaginative, and wonderfully illustrated, each 3 or 4 paneled strip contains a clever and usually shocking punch line that is perfectly complimented by artwork that varies from very simple to detailed and polished. Readers with an appreciation for dark comedy will likely enjoy Gurewitch’s sharp wit and twisted sense of humour.

I love these twisted little comic strips. Often the jokes are phenomenally wrong, but always fantastic. And you can tell Gurewitch spends a lot of time on his artwork. This'll take you half an hour to read, and you'll feel like a better person for it, because even though you laughed at it, at least you didn't create it.

The full-color book is nicely produced and contains a bunch of comics from the site mixed in with at least some that I had never seen before. At the end are some annotated outtakes and extras that provide a little insight into Gurewitch's comic-making system. The three-panel format is a perfect constraint for the rough chuckles in these tiny, harsh, universes.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-perry-bible-fellowship-trial-of.html ]

A bit formulaic, yes, but so,so funny and terrifying. Helped keep all those unicorns and shit real in the mid-oughts.