Pearls Before Swine (also known as Pearls) is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis. The series began on December 31, 2001. It chronicles the daily lives of an ensemble cast of suburban anthropomorphic animals: Pig, Rat, Zebra, Goat, and a fraternity of crocodiles, as well as a number of supporting characters, one of whom is Pastis himself. Each character represents an aspect of Pastis's personality and worldview. The daily and Sunday comic strip is distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication (by United Feature Syndicate until 2011). In 2018, Pastis won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year for his work on the strip. The strip's style is notable for its black comedy, simplistic artwork, self-deprecating fourth wall meta-humor, social commentary, mockery of itself or other comic strips, frequently experimental formats, and occasional elaborate stories leading to a pun.
Publication history Before creating Pearls Before Swine, Pastis worked as a lawyer in California. Bored in his law school classes, he doodled a rat, eventually casting it in a non-syndicated comic strip he called Rat. Rat became one of the main characters in Pearls Before Swine. Pastis continued to draw comics; the character Pig came from a failed strip, The Infirm. In 1999, Pastis first submitted Pearls Before Swine to a few syndicates. Several expressed interest and three accepted it, but they could not convince their sales staff that it was marketable. Amy Lago, an editor at United Media, saw the strip's potential and launched it on the United Media website in November 2000 to see what kind of response it would generate. Pastis recalled in 2009:
United signed me in December 1999, and they put me in development ... where the syndicate says, OK, you were funny in your submission packet, but for all we know, it took you 10 years to come up with these 30 strips. So we want you to keep drawing, and we'll watch you. If you're good, we'll agree to put you in newspapers. A development period can be anywhere from two weeks to a year. Not all cartoonists have to do it, but most do. Pearls Before Swine debuted in 2001 as a website strip under United Feature Syndicate. When Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and a supporter of the strip, told his fans about Pearls Before Swine, interest skyrocketed, and the strip was taken to print. Aiding Pastis with the strip's artistic elements was Darby Conley, creator of the comic strip Get Fuzzy. United Feature Syndicate launched the strip in newspapers on December 31, 2001, in The Washington Post. On January 7, 2002, Pearls was running in approximately 150 papers. Since 2011, it has been appearing in 750 newspapers worldwide. In January 2021, Andrews McMeel delayed the circulation of a comic arc that depicted Rat, as President of the United States, overthrown in a fictional American coup d'état by Guard Duck, worrying that readers might think of it as inspired by the 2021 United States Capitol attack. The arc was postponed to August/September 2021, and reruns were published in place of the originally scheduled week in January. Pastis and the company both clarified that the strips were a pure coincidence and had been drawn before the riots happened.
Influences Pearls's style and humor are inspired by several comic strips, chiefly Peanuts, Dilbert, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County and The Far Side. Pastis has drawn tributes to these influences in his strip. When asked in an interview whether his profession as an attorney inspired the humor in the comic, he said, "I was very unhappy as a lawyer, and humor is a reaction to and defense against unhappiness. ... if you dislike what you're doing to the extent that I did, it gives you the impetus to get out." Conley helped teach Pastis the technical aspects of cartooning. The two remain friends, sometimes poking fun at each other in their strips.
Characters This is a partial list of the strip's major and secondary characters:
Rat
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
