The heart of Perry Bible Fellowship
Waking up early to drive from Seattle to Portland made us here at Successless drowsy and a bit irritable. Rolling into town around 10:30 am, we hustled to the Lloyd Center Doubletree just in time to see one of our favorite artists. Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of Perry Bible Fellowship, seemed as low energy as we were. His thoughtful, drowsy way of fielding questions from the crowd (including Scott McCloud) while noshing on a bagel made me happy that we were easing into the festival spirit with the low energy panel. That is, until he dropped some nuggets of genius onto the unsuspecting cloud.
Did you know that the secret to Gurewitch’s success is a robot manufactured with the help of an engineer? This robot does all the hard work - coming up with the art style of the strip, the biting humor, and the beautiful lettering? Yeah, neither did I.
The dial below the slot is key to balancing the distinctive comedy/tragedy tone to his comics. The phone is what he picks up to relay three key ideas he wants in his comic (like pigs, chicken, sex). To illustrate the danger in mis-calibrating this balance, he set the tragedy dial to high and out popped Watchmen.
And finally, one last piece of advice from a brilliant cartoonist:
There you have it ladies and gentlemen - the tale of worldwide success, of how to become syndicated print darling, and how to piss off Hasbro (who sent a cease and desist letter because of the likeness of the cover to Candyland) .