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The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack (2009)

by Nicholas Gurewitch(Favorite Author)

4.47 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1593079885 (ISBN13: 9781593079888)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Dark Horse Books

review 1: Gurewitch is a talented cartoonist with an impressive range, most evident when he does pastiches, including some spot-on takes on Gorey. These strips are delightfully diverse, stylistically anyway, ranging from the simple, almost primitive, through the ornate, even almost baroque. Some are black and white, others lush full colour. The visual unpredictability of this makes these strips stand out from others with more fixed and unvarying styles. Gurewitch is also often quite funny, usually with a dark or macabre twist thrown in, and with a remarkable economy of expression; many strips are silent or nearly so, depending on readers making visual connections--sometimes including the necessity of making relatively large leaps to get the joke(e.g. panel 1: two wolves dressing up ... moreas sheep; panel 2: disguised wolves among the flock, evidently fooling the shepherd; panel 3: meat counter at the grocery store, with two packs of a somewhat different shape and colour than the others). After a while, the unpredictability itself gets a bit predictable, but the strips remain generally entertaining. However, sometimes the leaps are a bit larger than I could make; a few of the strips simply left me scratching my head. Furthermore, I've dinged this a star for, basically, waste of space. I read almost half this book just waiting in the line at the store (it was a long line admittedly), because there is only one strip per page, in contrast to the two or three per page more typical in strip collections. Now, this does make it easier to experience each strip as a unique phenomenon, but it also means a lot of white space and a quick read. At least the price is reasonable. Anyway, if you enjoy relatively abstruse, elliptical comics with a macabre bent and with occasional graphic (albeit not hardcore) content, this is worth checking out.
review 2: A comprehensive collection of the unusual comic strip Mr. Gurewitch began writing while in college and continued to produce for various newspapers after graduation. It's safe to say he learned how to maximize the potential of the three and four-panel format and the results amount to something like a modern, more absurd, and darker version of The Far Side. Often twisted, usually brilliant, and almost always hilarious. less

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