Online Cartoonist Finds Financial Success Offline 268
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
on another note, here is a fun task: read all the PBF comics: he has hidden references and messages across the whole series.
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it's a trap (Score:3, Funny)
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Mythical Bibles (Score:3, Funny)
Which is perfect for the bible, because it's a myth.
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It's not so much off-topic as ignorant as to what is the topic.
Only on Slashdot (Score:2)
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What does "proof" have to do with faith? If it was "real", it's one less example of the god the story is about. FWIW, some "paleontologists" have proven that Adam & Eve "walked with dinosaurs". There's even a museum to prove it, too. All of which, again, is just the destruction of ever more faith, the only thing the myth had going for it (except longevity).
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Proving the bible's stories are true is also besides the point, if the point is faith. Because faith is precisely what we have when things cannot be proven, not just because they're too inconvenient to do so on a given night.
I'm not going to get into a long debunking of the bible's "facts". I'm not even going to get into a debate about whether a book about the otherwise undocumented p
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Me and god, we've got an understanding. He doesn't exist, and I don't mind.
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As an athiest, I would like to thank you in advance for shutting the fuck up and stop making the rest of us look bad.
Save the anti-religion vile for a topic that's actually about religion. This topic is about a comic strip that has nothing to do with religion except to occasionally mock it, and even then such comics are few and far between.
I'll see you in the next proper religious-involved topic, and I'll probably be agreeing w
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Challenge the belief that all religion is false. Until then, the belief that it is a joke does seem universally acceptable.
Religious people think that because crazy opinions are everywhere (for instance, that Adam Sandler is funny) that their crazy ideas must be just the same, and accepted as va
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people who try to force their religious beliefs on others are troublesome. i don't disagree. however, there are plenty of them who are fine with keeping it to themselves. you can be follow a religion and still believe all the science that we have.
and on a further note, science has yet to ever be proven as fact. the
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The Diamond Age (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Diamond Age (Score:5, Insightful)
Nostalgia's all warm and fuzzy, sure, but eventually people who can't help clinging to the past get old and die, and the rest of us can move on.
Re:The Diamond Age (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with your argument (it's far from everybody who prefers vinyl to CDs or film to digital cameras), I must disagree with the proposition that it's only for nostalgic reasons. Film cameras are still objectively "better" than digital cameras, when you consider contrast and colour-balance and all that. And tube amps certainly have their uses, e.g. if you want the "warm analog" sound (which you can then easily record on to a CD). [By the way: It's not that the "warm analog" sound is a more accurate sound reproduction, it's only there when you abuse the electronics, but it's certainly more pleasant than the failure mode of digital electronics.]
The old saying "they don't make stuff like this today" is often true. Progress means the price goes down, and the product is thus available for more consumers, but still good enough for most. Some people however, are willing to pay extra, either in money or convenience, in order to get the "best", which often are what they made in the old days.
However, other things are better explained through fashion. People don't by vinyl because it's better. People buy vinyl for the same reason your grandfather always used a tie. It's the fashion.
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Hardly. Modern SLR's are every bit as capable as any old film camera, and they're a thousand times more convenient, versatile, and forgiving. I can go out, snap 500 pictures, come back home, throw them on to the computer in RAW format, throw out the pics I don't want, adjust the colour balance on the ones I like without any quality loss, and have a dozen excellent quality snaps, a
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Yes, but what's the point of using an objective measure in an area where subjective measurement is so important?
For a typical point 'n' shoot casual photographer, a consumer-grade digital camera will probably be "good enough" in quality.
A professional photographer working for a news organization might find that the better quality of film is cancelled out by the convenience of being ab
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> Er, I don't think more than a tiny, tiny fraction of people engage in those activities.
I'm sure you are aware that pretty much any recorded electric guitar is played through a tube amp?
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Each and every time (both times) I bring up this point, someone tells me about the JC. Perhaps that was you as well, last time, but I think it's rather typical that the one amp that is really good and SS is the Jazz Chorus. Yes, there are other examples, and yes, it's a REALLY good amplifier, but you get my point.
Maybe I'm out of the recording loop, but all the bands I know (both large/global and small/local) record tube. And then there's the tube compressors, etc. It's not required, if you
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Illogical (Score:2)
I have not read the book but I fail to see the logic in that. If it makes nearly everything possible then surely it can create everything which is made by hand as well in such a manner that it is hard/impossible to distinguish between the two. In such a world I would have thought that new ideas are t
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PBF is fine in either format (Score:2)
I read PBF online, but will probably buy multiple copies of the book to use as gifts.
Some comix I don't think cut it on screen. Some of Chris Ware's head-thumpers like the "Acme Novelty Company" really belong on a printed page.
Newspaper comics (Score:5, Insightful)
I love PBF and other online comics. They can do or say anything they like without censorship. PBF wouldn't be the same if it couldn't use explicit material.
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However, some of his best stuff is for adults. Too bad the website crashed so I can't show you an example.
Epic:
"The Man with No Penis"
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I'd have a hard time figurin
Re:Newspaper comics (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are still newspapers?
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Yep, and I still subscribe to one. I just wish I could pay half-price for a trimmed down local-only version with comics and the crossword.
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I think PBF has a similar random dark humor.
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(Although according to Wikipedia The Far Side finished earlier the same year, for all you nitpickers out there)
Re:Newspaper comics (Score:5, Informative)
It's just you. Well, OK, they're pretty awful as a whole but there are still some decent ones:
Still not funny:
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I recognize the difference between "unfunny" and "dramatic". Note that I didn't list Gil Thorp or Rex Morgan, MD or anything else like that. I think you're wrong about Gasoline Alley, though. Although it is basically a long-running serial, it tries to be funny quite often. For Better Or For Worse is in the same category except that its humor succeeds more often than not.
Re:Newspaper comics (Score:5, Informative)
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This might be heresy, but I though Foxtrot was funnier as a daily. It's like Amend is trying to cram a week's worth of humor into a single strip. I still like it better than most other comics, but I think he's jumped the shark.
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Re:Newspaper comics (Score:5, Funny)
NO WAY. Take Garfield. There was this one time that Garfield tried to get a lasagna, and Jon tried to stop him, and then ODIE got involved. I'm crying here just remembering it. Man it was funny.
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Oh yeah! I remember that one. Good times had by all. Reminds me of the one where Charlie Brown says 'Good Grief!'.
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Re:Newspaper comics (Score:5, Interesting)
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].
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Ouch. I really wish you put the NSFW flag on The Other Family.
To be honest, the few captions I did see weren't all that funny, and certainly not as funny as the old "Dysfunctional Family Circus" of the '90s. IIRC, the DFC was just one guy moderating submissions from everyone who cared to submit a caption. I think Andy Ihnatko was a big contributor to it back then.
And the DFC was wildly NSFW. It eventually added its own cast of unsavory characters to the strip, like the unseen (Thank God!) Uncle Roy.
Sad
dead tree DFC (Score:2)
I was there when Bill Keene killed DFC (Score:3, Interesting)
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Is it just me or are the comics in newspapers COMPLETELY devoid of any humor?
They mostly suck (and ALL online comics that I've seen suck), but one notable exception is Brewster Rockit -- Space Guy! [comicspage.com], which is often hilarious. Another that is very funny is In The Bleachers [yahoo.com].
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Comics in The Guardian are always high quality. There's currently Steve Bell's 'If' strip and Doonesbury, plus PBF, and in the past they've re-run Krazy Kat.
Unlike US newspapers, UK papers don't generally have an eight page comic section to fill - perhaps that is the reason for the perceived decrease in quality.
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Mirror (Score:5, Funny)
Retarded. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Support the artist (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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br? Yeah and thank god I didn't have to pay for that tripe. I keep hoping they'll get their magic back but everything after OK computer has been utter rot. I cant beleive they dissappeared up their own collective ass quite so far as they did.
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Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Achewood (Score:2)
Re:Achewood (Score:4, Informative)
But now... (Score:2)
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WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Everyone makes that promise and everyone breaks it.
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Not only did I not make that promise, but I didn't do it because I'd lost touch and knew it back when I was in my late twenties. Heck, I have a strong suspicion that I wasn't even in touch during high school. Had no idea what was in with regard to fashion, music, popular kids, etc. And somehow all through it and to this day I have managed to maintain deep and friendly ties with representatives of every age group, gender, and social class imaginable. I t
Personal Favorites (Score:3, Insightful)
PBF has been a favorite of mine for a while, now. Here's some others(wiki pages. Paper comic sites(read: syndicate sites) suck more often than not):
Zits [wikipedia.org]
Online comics:Get Fuzzy
Pearls Before Swine [wikipedia.org]
Lio [wikipedia.org]
Schlock Mercenary [schlockmercenary.com]
Something Positive [somethingpositive.net]
Erfworld [giantitp.com]
Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]
Irregular Webcomic! [irregularwebcomic.net]
There's a few others, but that's most of them.
You have to buy the book... (Score:2)
Someday I might set it up to read it off my blog, but otherwise I'm not interested. It's one thing to have a quirky web site, it's another thing to violate easy usability guidelines. There are too many other good web comics out there
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I've been doing too much reading lately. I noticed that "IsupposeIshouldbehappyyoudidn'ttypeotalloutlikethis" had a typo within a split second. I think you mean IsupposeIshouldbehappyyoudidn'ttypeitalloutlikethis.
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Studio Foglio - highly recommended (Score:2)
Girl Genius [girlgeniusonline.com]
Buck Godot [zapgunforhire.com]
They have RSS feeds, though I've never used them.
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Geez, some people really have to have it spelled out for them.
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