The Perry Bible Fellowship
is a newspaper comic strip/webcomic by Nicholas Gurewitch. It's notable for its black, surrealist humour. It specializes in juxtaposing whimsical settings with morbid subject matter. It's kind of like The Far Side, except with cutesier art and more murder.
Most of the tropes it encounters, it subverts. Art Shifts are frequent; it goes for either a very intricate or very simplistic art style, depending on the joke. Has a habit of Crossing the Line Twice, and sometimes three or four times. At some point, it will probably ruin your childhood. Maybe your adulthood, too.
Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, a reprint of the original webcomic and additional artwork, won the 2008 Eisner Comic Book Industry Award for Best Humor Publication. The comic is currently on semi-hiatus, and updates every once in a blue moon.
Compare Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
This webcomic contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Many examples of kids being dicked around by parents.
- Art Shift: Usually used as part of a punchline.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: A frequent punchline.
- Black Comedy: The punchline is usually something disturbingly dark.
- Bloody Hilarious: There is a lot of gore in the comics, always Played for Laughs.
- Crapsaccharine World: The comics usually start out as cutesy, but end up dark, deconstructive, and often gory.
- Cut-and-Paste Comic: For the more elaborate art.
- Deconstructive Parody: See homage below.
- Dope Slap: Of all the places to start a Food Fight, a third-world country is not the best.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Neither is an air crash site a good opportunity to be creative with your marriage proposal.
- Mood Dissonance: Disturbing events tend to be combined with a cutesy art style.
- Mood Whiplash: Comics tend to start out
really sweet and then end up ridiculously dark, or vice-versa
- Pretty in Mink: A redheaded lady in a green dress also wears a white fur wrap.
- Reality Ensues: A frequent source of the series' comedy, such as Transformers transforming with passengers riding or anthropomorphic cars visiting new places.
- Recycled INSPACE: An adults-only version of The Far Side.
- Word Salad Title: Let's say it's not something likely to be found on a church's bulletin board.
- Yonkoma: It's perhaps a stretch to call it this, but many strips have exactly four panels, and all are titled.
Specific strips contain examples (usually subversions) of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: A pair of kids enter one in Secret Mutant Hero Team, only to find a team of hideous mutant molerats.
- Affair Hair: "The Blue Hair" inverts this trope, Wolverine finds a blue hair on his lover and sets out to get Beast. Played with as the last panel shows that hair comes from a blue lion plush next to the girl's bed.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Averted in Adam 2.0. The robot was curious and compassionate, but when they gave him a Heart Drive aka humanity....
- All Your Powers Combined: Features a Deconstruction of this, in this comic, where a Power Rangers-like hero team combine into a giant gun.
- After the End: "Post Apocalyptic" parodies The Postman, with the delivery of a sweepstakes entry.
- Animal Nemesis: Mocked in this strip, where a diver kills a scar-eyed Threatening Shark to avenge his father's death, only to find that Scar-Eyed Sharks are actually a common species.
- Appropriate Animal Attire: Parodied when a realistic (and thus naked) rabbit gets into hot water in a land of fully dressed Funny Animals.
- Ass in a Lion Skin: A halfway literal example: a donkey disguising himself as a unicorn.
- Badass Preacher: Preach Skate◊ is a Totally Radical priest with some awesome skateboarding skills. Not awesome enough to avoid getting injured, though.
- Badass Teacher: Mr Ortego lost his hand in some pretty hardcore circumstances, although he denies it, saying it was a woodcutting accident.
- Base-Breaking Character: Skub, in-universe. Made more hilarious because we, the outside viewer, get no context as to why what looks like a can of ointment causes such violent debates. Some fandoms have even adopted "skub" as a by-word for "Base Breaking Character".
- Be Careful What You Wish For: A boy in "One More Day" wishes for his Gramps to be alive for one more day...too bad Gramps is still in his coffin.
- Bedroom Adultery Scene: A funny one where the couple are Anole lizards and the interloper sneaking out is a Chameleon.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Used for subversion in "Disgusting Ted". We see a man leering lustfully at a horse's rump, and his friend being disgusted by that... but actually all three are centaurs, and Ted's friend is disgusted because the girl centaur is too young.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Schlorbians need to get a grasp on "Human Terminology".
- Captain Ersatz: The blond guy who is apparently Little Mac (who has brown or black hair depending on the game, but never blonde) in this parody of Punch-Out!!
- Carnivore Confusion: Played for Laughs in this comic featuring dinosaurs in class, with a Tyrannosaurus rex professor teaching a class of herbivores.Mr. Rex: See me after class, Pete.
- Cassandra Truth: When asking for an answer in "Quiz Kid", the recipient is rather miffed to be handed a sketch of an ejaculating penis...except that he's taking sex ed, so that is the right answer, apparently.
- Caught with Your Pants Down: In "Caught", a husband is found masturbating in his "man cave", but it all takes a happy turn.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: "The Golden Ticket" ponders how it would be different if Wonka runs a meat factory instead of a candy factory (note the Art Shift to Quentin Blake)
- Clown Car: "Honk" shows what happens when one crashes.
- Combining Mecha: The Guntron is a team of Voltron-like heroes combining into a giant gun.
- The Computer Is Your Friend: Truancy bot, is a well-intentioned, though not very apt, robot.
- Cool Uncle: Crazy Uncle Duncan stages a gladiator fight for his nephews, which they really enjoy. Until the real lion shows up.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The people of Durab Inc. are willing to make a little child cry just to test the quality of their latest paper tissues.
- Cosmetic Catastrophe: Elana, the vampire girl ends up with one.Elana's mother: "The other girls can see vhat ze hell zhey are doing!"
- Creepy Souvenir: A kid gets particularly disturbing Memorabilia from an Ancient Roman gladiator fight.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Exaggerated in "Martha's Orphanage". First, Santa doesn't visit the titular orphanage, then it catches fire... and then it gets attacked by a Giant Spider.
- Deface of the Moon: The Schlorbians attempt to insult humanity by writing a message on the Moon. Unfortunately for them, they are very bad at spelling.
- Depraved Kids' Show Host: "Catch Phrase" (The host committed suicide after being dogged by his silly Catch-Phrase — which was then engraved on his tombstone.)
- Distracted by the Sexy: The father of the victim in "Bully" forgets about admonishing his son's attacker and instead makes out with the bully's mother.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Caused by Puppy-Dog Eyes in "Executive Decision". Yes, It Makes Sense in Context (just barely).
- Fantastic Racism: "Bad Apple" implies this is the situation between fruits and vegetables, after an apple is beaten up by a carrot and broccoli for spraying 'seedless' on a car.
- Finger in the Mail: After Colonel Sweeto is outed as a chocolate spy, the Chocolate Kingdom receives a box containing his "nut".
- Food Fight: Not something The Red Cross approves of.
- From Bad to Worse: Poor Martha's orphanage. First Santa forgets them, then the spiders attack ...
- Future Imperfect: A futuristic society forgets some of the details about WWII.
- Gag Penis: In exchange for your soul, The Devil will give you one like rope!
- Gallows Humor: The game Hang-Man takes on a whole new meaning.
- Gone Horribly Right: Hugbot is adorable. Especially when he tries installing a nuclear reactor.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: This hen's father is is very dissapointed with her decision to not keep her eggs ...
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Mr. Rex wears a shirt, tie and glasses, but no pants. The clothes signify his higher status as teacher in a class of non-clothed dinosaur children.
- Hollywood History: Because battles in WWII were mainly between British-Jewish Lancers on Zebras and Nazis armed with laser guns and WWI-era Kaiser Helmets.
- Homage: We wish it didn't, but there are ones to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Family Circus, The Mario Brothers, Edward Gorey, and The Giving Tree◊ (The Unforgiving Tree, now removed from the main site).
- Horrible Judge of Character: The principal in this◊ comic.Principal: "What makes you think you'd make a good kindergarden teacher?"Interviewee: *smiles with fanged mouth, rips head off with bare hands, and spiders come out of neck*Principal: "I like your style."
- Humans Are Bastards: The implication after this robot is given 'humanity'.
- Human Sacrifice: To Aranaktu, who accepts all "gifts."
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Jeremy applies his skills at Tetris in "Game Boy" to clean his room.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The bully in Nice Shirt learns that unicorns are real, the hard way.
- Impossible Pickle Jar : Bruce Banner encounters one in "The Green Menace". Of course, he's only able to open it once he transformed into Hulk.
- Inevitable Waterfall: The bird couldn't stay on that raft forever, and they both knew it ...
- Inkblot Test: Psychoanalyst tries to pick up one of his patients with a lewd inkblot, and gets slapped for it.
- Interspecies Romance: Bacon Egg (wherein a farmer who doesn't like bacon and eggs goes to break two lovers up) and Not Today (wherein the typical "a child girl and her pet do things" kid's story takes an adult turn). Also Different (where a fairy turns down affections from a butterfly and later has sex with a mouse).
- Jumping Out of a Cake: Double subverted when "Miggs" got the wrong cake.
- Kung-Fu Jesus: JESUS VS. GANESH IN A BATTLE FOR SOULS (actually prayers for the spelling bee
- Lilliputian Warriors: Intruders approach! Release the Agronox!
- Literal Metaphor: "Take on the world".
- Make a Wish: The Wishing Well. It actually works, but everybody only gets one.
- Merit Badges for Everything: Even for having protected sex with a prostitute. "Be Prepared" indeed.
- Missing Reflection: This strip explores how inconvenient no reflection is for makeup application.
- Non-Human Head:
- People with musical instruments for heads are the characters of "Harmony"; the bassoon's father is not pleased at her settling to marry a lowly whistle.
- People with rock, paper, or a pair of scissors for heads get into an argument over seating in "Shotgun", which they decide can only be decided one way... gladiatorial combat.
- "Mrs. Hammer" is about a hammer-headed man discovering that his wife (a plank of wood) has a screw embedded in her.
- While at first the characters are angled so it isn't obvious, the twist in "Sweet Deal" is that the people all have teeth for heads and can be murdered with excess sugar.
- "Hard Read" is centered around two people with books for heads.
- "Preserves" has a peanut butter-headed man marrying a jelly-headed woman, only to be disgusted when her 'will pop if seal is broken' doesn't pop when he takes her veil off.
- The characters in "Bad Apple" are gangs of fruit-headed people and rival vegetable-headed people.
- "Genius, Sir" shows a war between soldiers with dice for heads and dominoes for heads.
- People with musical instruments for heads are the characters of "Harmony
- Noodle Incident: How Mister Ortega lost his hand in "Shop". Apparently, he figures the kid would never believe the story behind it, so keeps it to himself.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: Doctor Loring just can't avoid reducing everything to geometric proofs.
- Not in Front of the Parrot: "Boss" shows the danger of discussing a Klingon Promotion with a parrot in the room.
- Porn Stash: Passed On Grandpa makes sure that his little boy gets one of his most prized possessions, even from beyond the grave.
- Precision F-Strike: "Barry. Shut the fuck up... seriously."
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Wherein a race of puppies manage to convince aliens to go blow up Earth instead of the puppy home planet, but be careful of overusing it.
- Rocketless Reentry: One comic has an astronaut fall during a spacewalk. Reentry burns him down to a single, minuscule ash, which two children mistake for the first snowflake of winter.
- Snowed-In: Missing School shows that snow days aren't always a good thing.
- Sugar Bowl: Suicide Train, wherein a man finds out the hard way that it's very hard to commit suicide when you live in a children's pastel world and everything has wings.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Bed Monster, where a father reassures his kid that there isn't a monster under his bed except there was, it kills the kid and then pays the father.
- Timmy in a Well: Or a burning building, rather. Subverted, naturally.
- Transforming Mecha: Refridgeron and Magnimus are parodies of the Transformers.
- Trapped in TV Land: These kids find out that it's not the best idea to explore the fictional world of a satanic book.
- Vagina Dentata: Zarflax has one (NSFW).
- Virginity Flag: A jam jar apparently comes with one.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?:
- Wishing Well: This strip has a man wishing for true love and obtaining a girlfriend as a result. However, he sees other people leaving with wheelbarrows of money, a spaceship or Superman's powers, and clearly has second thoughts.
- Written Sound Effect: This comic, in which the sound effects also happen to sound like racial slurs, which leads to the Iron Fist parody telling the Luke Cage parody how his fighting style is "extremely problematic". Luke's response is to break Iron Fist's back like Bane with the sound effect "CCRRCKKKRRR"
- Your Mime Makes It Real: A candidate for Mayor of Mime City is shot dead with a Finger Gun...that is, a Finger Sniper Rifle, complete with Laser Sight. The police pull out their Finger Guns in response.
