i’ve been a fan of nicholas gurewitch’s perry bible fellowship comic strip for years. the first time i visited the comic’s website gurewitch had been drawing the comics for a while. so i compulsively pored through every one, addicted to their unpredictable humour. ‘unpredictable’ is a common point of praise for the series, and can be said to relate both to the nature of the punchlines themselves, as well as gurewitch’s artistic versatility.

here are a couple of my favourites: nice shirt, not today little one and no one is thirsty.

though each strip is a stand-alone three or four panel piece, the artwork differs from comic to comic, with some beautifully intricate, others reminiscent of 40s crime comics and yet others featuring utterly simple linework. but the varying artistic styles are united by what gurewitch calls ‘a certain type of storytelling’, which often involves a final panel rendering the whole tableau ridiculously funny.

it requires restraint and skill to craft such hilarious perfection, which is reflected in gurewitch’s comparatively slow production rate. the hit rate of the series is also uneven; sometimes my reaction is solely intellectual rather than tickled. but many of the strips are comic sledgehammers – as likely to elicit a belly laugh as having a very clever friend tell you her most wily joke. and you can be sure that if you aren’t so sweet on a certain one, someone else will be. i have read through these with sam and our approving laughter alternated fairly predictably.

the trial of colonel sweeto is gurewitch’s first published collection and has deservedly already hit the amazon bestseller list. you can try out the goods on the internet too, for free.