And that's even before you get to the final product of his labors, a sizeable but extremely slim (as in, 48 pages total) hardcover.

With his leisurely pace and obsessive care, Gurewitch clearly intends a comprehensive rebuke to glib, insubstantial, always-expiring insta-culture. 'The book will be printed on recycled paper, with forest-friendly methods, delaying Armageddon by (probably) 15 minutes!' he wrote in one update. He's drawn his readers into every aspect of Notes' creation, from the pattern of its endsheets to the choice of paper stock. As the book has glacially taken shape, Gurewitch has posted descriptions and videos of its evolution and received feedback along with donations. He's been working on Notes since 2014, using a Kickstarter campaign as a source of both funds and community. After spending years dispensing digestible little comics through the ephemeral medium of the Internet, Gurewitch seems to have conceived this project as an opportunity to explore permanence and process. Notes on a Case of Melancholia is different - style-wise, at least. One day Gurewitch might fill his panels with gentle watercolor scenes and realistic figures the next day, he'll scrawl thickly lined blobs that are only recognizable as human thanks to the presence of limbs and an accessory or two (a pair of glasses, a BDSM-style ball gag). That variability is itself a running joke, a sendup of the idea of auteur-ist style. PBF's often-mordant sense of humor is belied by the lightheartedness of the format (short, silly jokes) and the art, which varies according to Gurewitch's whim. In between grappling with conventional subjects like modern technology and modern relationships, Gurewitch's characters often encounter existential dilemmas that are simultaneously knotty and ludicrous. But he's less interested in the particulars of competing faiths than in the painful absurdity of faith itself. Gurewitch does contemplate religion frequently in the strip, as when a flock of woolly sheep worship a fluffy cloud as their risen savior or two different kids pray to win their school spelling bee, triggering a no-holds-barred deathmatch between Jesus and Ganesh. If you're a PBF fan, you know the name signals a '90s-style mockery of all things clean-cut and sincere, not a focus on religious subjects in particular. He's best known for The Perry Bible Fellowship, the beloved, award-winning gag strip he started way back in 2001. But given the nature of this strange project, Gurewitch probably has a longer horizon in mind. Notes on a Case of Melancholia, or: A Little Death probably won't sell well in a nation gripped by a pandemic. That's because it's a comedy about death - or Death, to be more precise, as in the Grim Reaper himself. It's hard to decide whether Nicholas Gurewitch's new book is jarringly at odds with our current moment or perfectly suited to it.

Notes on a case of melancholia