Online Cartoonist Finds Financial Success Offline

destinyland writes "The first collection of Perry Bible Fellowship comics has racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following. Within seven weeks the volume required a third printing. Ironically, the 25-year-old cartoonist speculates people would rather read his arty comics in a book than on a computer screen, and warns that 'There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page...' He also explains the strange anti-censorship crusade in high school that earned him an FBI record!"

PBF transcends the net

[Anonymous Coward]

My father, who isn't even a geek was describing one of the comics to me. If I recall correctly, it was on display in Maxim magazine.

on another note, here is a fun task: read all the PBF comics: he has hidden references and messages across the whole series.

The Diamond Age

[Anonymous Coward]

'There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page...' If you've read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, it's all laid out in there. Nano technology makes nearly everything possible, and at the same time makes nearly everything ubiquitous and therefore worthless. The only true things of value are those labor intensive things made by hand. You can already see the trend developing in our current world, despite being decades, possibly centuries away from the technology written about in the book. The retro trends of listening to record albums and tube amps. Analog is unique. Digital is common, unexceptional, vulgar. Film and real fiber prints will become prized possessions. The same future lies ahead for bound paper books.

Support the artist

[YodaYid]

I bought the book simply to support Nicholas Gurewitch - there was not much in there that I didn't already see before. But since his site doesn't have advertising, I was happy to support him directly (it's comparable to Radiohead's "pay what you like" model in that sense).

I do wish there were more "special features" in the book, but there are some interesting bits at the end where he includes comics that he has since taken out of the PBF canon, explaining why he made those decisions (for example, he eschews pop references in his comics, so those sort of comics are part of the "Lost Strips" series in the back of the book). Also, he has some of his extra-tasteless ones :-)

I like to think of PBF as the opposite of Penny Arcade, which is almost always topical, picking apart the latest headlines for laughs (not a bad thing, just different). PBF's humor will still be funny in fifty years, when people will have no clue what Penny Arcade (or South Park, or Family Guy for that matter) are talking about. It has that timeless element to it that makes me a fan.

And before I forget, congratulations to Nicholas Gurewitch on his success! It is well deserved.

Re:Newspaper comics

[moosesocks]

Although it's really easy [xkcd.com] to make fun of Garfield, there have been a few interesting cases of Jim Davis breaking from the main storyline.

For instance, this [snopes.com] story arc from 1989 is moderately disturbing, especially when you consider that it's is Garfield comic....

And while we're on the subject of Garfield: removing Garfield's thought bubbles removed [truthandbeautybombs.com] can be quite humorous (and occasionally depressing), while randomized sets [dougshaw.com] of 3 frames from the comic are about as funny and as coherent as the real thing.

And finally, although it's not garfield, The Family Circus can be easily made funny with a different set of captions [theotherfamily.com].

Re:WTF?

[BeanThere]

No; there is a clear cultural trend towards nihilism. It may be a(n over) reaction to a prior overly sanitised and politically correct era brought on in part by the Comics Code. The same undercurrents are present in most major media - movies, music, art etc. This 'race to the bottom' has been pretty much taken to its extremes now, so I look forward to the pendulum (hopefully) swinging the other way again soon. But given the way cynicism, boorishness and not caring are 'in', that people can't seem to tell the difference between cynicism and intelligence anymore, and that developing the intelligence to do so is not 'in', I'm not sure it will.

I was there when Bill Keene killed DFC

[spun]

I made quite a few captions for the original DFC. I was known as 'spun' there, too. Many of them even made it into the 'green' category. I was there when DFC closed down. Bill Keene himself called the guy who ran the site and basically said, "The cartoon is about me and my family, and you guys are putting us into the most disgusting and degrading situations. What if my kids read this site? Please, would you stop?" So we all felt kinda bad, and we stopped, but that doesn't make DFC any less funny. You can still find all the captions archived in various places on the web if you look...