comics
 "The Perry Bible Fellowship" gets biblical on your ass with The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, a new collection of strips from these indie favorites. (Note: C-VILLE does not condone unicorn-related violence.) |
"The Perry Bible Fellowship" is the name of an up-and-coming indie comic strip by Nicholas Gurewitch. PBF became something of an Internet sensation, winning Ignatz and Harvey awards for its online content, and has since been picked up by alternative newsweeklies around the country. It has nothing to do with bible fellowships based in Perry, Maine, and this inaugural hardcover collection has very little to do with the character of Colonel Sweeto, the Robert Hanssen of the candy world.
Sweeto, like almost all PBF characters, appears for just one cartoon. That’s part of what sets this delightfully subversive strip apart: Unlike most comic strips, Gurewitch does not employ a regular cast of characters or a signature artistic style. His simple three- to four-panel cartoons range wildly from hyper-detailed aliens to super-sketchy stick figures to whimsical pedophile sea gods to near-Futurist philandering sunbathers. Artistically, PBF is all over the place, and that’s a boon for a collection like this. The visual versatility keeps things from getting monotonous, and no two strips look the same.
Instead, the strips’ unifying thread comes from their unapologetically twisted sense of humor. Gurewitch is part absurdist, part pessimist, almost all sadist. Many of the strips trade on childhood tropes—fairy tales, dinosaurs, pirates, aliens, robots—but take them to dark, often sexually inappropriate conclusions. Gurewitch has a distinctly juvenile quality to his work, but I use that term with the utmost respect. There’s a spark in these strips, a giddy, gleeful quality like a kid shaking an ant farm to see what will happen. You get the distinct impression that Gurewitch asked a lot of questions as a child and didn’t like the answers he got.
But he’s got plenty of answers now, and PBF is arguably one of the smartest strips on the market today (and occasionally one of the filthiest—it’s no "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles," but it has its bawdy moments). It’s often the simplest concepts that produce the most ingenious results. Consider "Genius Sir," a strip in which a pair of dice take on a squadron of dominos on a battlefield, or "Cars," where a couple of anthropomorphized autos decide to go on an adventure regardless of their human passengers’ limits. And "Happy Brothers" should totally be printed on a t-shirt.
There are a few clunkers, of course (it took me a couple of reads to finally "get" "The Other Girls," and "Nude Beach" and "Boss" are a little too easy). And a couple of favorites from the PBF archive curiously didn’t make the cut (no "Gamblin’ Man"? Aw, shucks). But beyond that, the book’s only real failing is its flimsy "Lost Strips" section, with a handful of outtakes and a couple strips that were nixed for personal or political reasons. Gurewitch’s notes are interesting, but in lieu of something more substantial I’d have preferred a couple more pages of classic strips.
Finally, a word of warning: The colorful, candy-character-littered cover might attract younger readers, but this is definitely not for kids. Unless you want them to grow up to produce seriously screwed up, laugh-out-loud funny comic strips, in which case, let the ankle biters have at it.
