The Bleakest of Webcomic Comedies (Part 2)

Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch

One of the great tragedies of the Internet is that Nicholas Gurewitch's surreal Perry Bible Fellowship rarely updates, anymore.

Then again, considering how much detail goes into each colorful panel, the attentiveness and variation of style, and the precision of each strange joke, perhaps it's best to allow Gurewitch all the time he needs.

I mean, if his current projects are such gems like the short film, Martha's B-Day, why press him to keep a regular update schedule?

Martha's B-Day 10-09-1985 from New Picture Agencies on Vimeo.

Dark twists, as you may notice, are his specialty.

Like Nightmare Theatre, Gurewitch's comic treats sex, religion, and suicide as viable material from which any number of jokes can be squeezed. Unlike Ricky Garduno, however, Gurewitch rarely revisits the same characters. He's content to concentrate on form and beautifully ludicrous stories.

When I first discovered Perry Bible Fellowship in its update hey-day, I was baffled and a little nervous by the comic. It was, and remains, one of the strangest and darkly fascinating creations on the Internet. Gurewitch has since gone on to win an Ignatz Award, the Web Cartoonist's Choice Award, and an Eisner.

Surely, there will be more work from Nicholas Gurewitch in the future, but I'll try and be content with the archives and the scraps of his presence still found online. He's a difficult person to forget.