Gurewitch's Twisted Fellowship

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on March 27, 2007 Sign up now!

by Laura Hudson, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 3/27/2007

Originally launched by creator Nicholas Gurewitch as a comic strip for the Syracuse University student paper, The Perry Bible Fellowship is now a two-time Ignatz award-winning Web comic with a cult following and a hardcover collection on the way from Dark Horse in August. Despite its name, the comic has little to do with Christianity, save the occasional strips blending the religious and the profane. With an artistic style that can vary dramatically from strip to strip, the weekly comic explores "the concept of foolhardy notions incurring terrible, unexpected outcomes" through the lens of Gurewitch's distinctive humor, described by turns as twisted, cerebral and sweet.

PW Comics Week: Will the first Perry Bible Fellowship collection reprint existing strips from your Web site, or will it include new material?

Nicholas Gurewitch: It will reprint existing strips from my Web site as well as a bit of new material, and a few surprises.

PWCW: How big is your initial print run?

NG: The boys at Dark Horse tell me 10,000.

PWCW: T-shirts can be big sellers for Web comics, but you only have two available on your site. Is merchandise an aspect of your business that you want to expand, or something you'd prefer to limit?

NG: I'm not sure how I feel about PBF on shirts. It seems like it might have the kitchiness of a photo frosted on a cake. So many people offer shirts, anyway. I should probably specialize in something else. We've been thinking about doing paperweights.

PWCW: How large is your current readership? How has your audience changed, as you've moved from a college paper to the Web and periodicals like the Guardian?

NG: I can't really guess the largeness, but it has definitely grown. A good barometer seems to be children from foreign countries. The sheer variety of people is pretty revealing, too. A teacher in London e-mailed me today to tell me that he starts each lesson with a PBF. Seems a bit unreal, but that's the Internet for you.

PWCW: What do you think attracts such a diverse audience to PBF?

NG: Well, it doesn't specialize in video games or superheroes or anything else. Maybe that's inviting to people.

PWCW: Your strips tend to vary widely in style and content—every week is a new universe. Is there any overarching theme in your work?

NG: I think there are a few obvious ones like "bad things happen" or "dreams can come true," but I don't think I should be the one to analyze my own work. Good self-analyses are so rare.

PWCW: You've cited cartoonists Gary Larson and Bill Watterson as big influences on your work. Do you have any interest in varying your three-to-four panel structure with other layouts, like the one-panel format of Far Side, or the more experimental paneling of Calvin and Hobbes?

NG: Sure, but I think I'm a bit more interested in keeping my job. Papers might be upset if I handed in a page from a graphic novel. I'm sometimes angry that I have to budget my space, instead of just throwing down the images as I see them in my head. It ends up being good for the story, though, because unnecessary scenery gets cropped out. Do I really need these coconut trees? Probably not.

PWCW: What about the new collection—any artistic experimentation there?

NG: I am actually including a couple of "sequels" that extend the stories of other comics. Nothing too fancy, though.

PWCW: You have a background in filmmaking, with several short films under your belt. Are you currently working on any projects outside the medium of comics?

NG: Working on a big script, and lots of little ones. Sometimes I baby-sit my nephew.

PWCW: Anything we should keep an eye out for?

NG: Naw, he's a good kid.

PWCW: You've compared the structure of comic books to that of storyboards in film. What are the differences in adapting your ideas to one medium or the other?

NG: You can compare comics to music and poetry as well. The exhibition of relationships is the major thing going on in any work of art. Artists isolate ideas, or objects, or dialogue, or themes, and they anticipate how the audience will respond to changes in them. It feels wrong to bring up the differences when the similarities are so huge.

PWCW: Many of your strips feature spare, almost featureless humanoids. What inspired you to make your characters such minimalist figures?

NG: The first strip I ever used the simple folk for was a comic called "Dad and Monster." I guess I was uncomfortable with a child getting eaten by a monster, even though the concept of it was very funny. Loosening the representational value might have made me more comfortable with the idea. I think this actually has something to do with why I rarely enjoy animated comedic violence. The whole simulated-action thing makes it seem too real, and therefore a bit vulgar. That's definitely a consideration when executing ideas on paper versus on screen.

PWCW: Why do you give a completely different answer every time someone asks about the origin of the name "Perry Bible Fellowship"?

NG: Fact is, it's very difficult for me to remember quite why I was drawn to it. Borrowing it from a church was a rash decision that, in retrospect, seems to have had myriad small reasons, but no real good ones. If I were to isolate one reason, it would probably be the fact that I didn't intend to do the comic strip for any length of time.

PWCW: You once mentioned that it would be "totally fun" to draw the X-Men. Do you have any serious interest in drawing comic books?

NG: No, not seriously. It would be totally fun, though. I haven't drawn Wolverine since I was in the fifth grade. I have a better understanding of hair now.