[Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of some of my favorite webcomics creator interviews that previously ran on WizardUniverse.com and were a part of the site’s archives that are no longer hosted there. What Gary Larson Far Side was to me in fifth grade, Nicholas Gurewitch’s Perry Bible Fellowship is to me now. It’s definitely one of those webcomics that’s jumped the planet into the larger awareness of comics. More and more are doing it every day. This was originally posted on January 3, 2007.]
Nicholas Gurewitch squirms a bit when you try to pigeonhole The Perry Bible Fellowship as a webcomic. The comic creator got his start at Syracuse University with the campus newspaper The Daily Orange. Gurewitch has long since taken his comics to the Web and expanded across the globe on the Internet and in print, landing spots in Maxim and The Guardian. We pulled Gurewitch away from his craft for a few minutes to talk about his vast arsenal of art styles and the year ahead, which he says will include his first full book of PBF comics.
BRIAN WARMOTH: You’re slated to introduce a screening of Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal” at a local theater next week. Is it one of your favorite films?
GUREWITCH: I don’t know if it’s one of my favorites, but I’m really attracted to the techniques involved, and they were looking for someone to introduce the flick, and I said I’d love to.
Is filmmaking something you’d be interested in pursuing?
GUREWITCH: I’m always writing scripts. I’m trying to crank out a feature [length] right now.
I’m trying to expand some things into a longer form, and I guess one way of doing that is by writing a movie. I’ve always been interested in film, though. It’s what I went to school for.
What areas did you focus on? Writing, production or directing…?
GUREWITCH: All of it. Production.
Neat. I guess that begs the question of what else you’re into. Are you spinning anything else on the side right now?
GUREWITCH: Not a ton. I’ve always been drawing pictures, and I dabbled in superhero comics in my youth. I actually had a piece in Wizard [issue #88] at one point. It was one of the envelope art things. I really liked it. It had Scud the Disposable Assassin on it.