Stephan Pastis, "Pearls Before Swine" cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview, Part 1

Stephan Pastis is a big fan of Ricky Gervais, creator of "The Office" and "Extras," and Larry David, co-creator of "Seinfeld" and creator of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." He also loves him some Cheryl Hines. As a matter of fact, I think the only reason I landed him on the show today is because I interviewed the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" co-star, and that gets him one degree closer to her.

Pastis’ “Pearls Before Swine” comic strip has twice been named Best Newspaper Comic Strip of the Year by the National Cartoonists Society, in 2004 and again in 2007, and it is that funny and that weird.

Well, Zeeba neighbors, prepare yourself for Stephan Pastis.

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BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: How long have the animals been talking to you?

STEPHAN PASTIS: Oh my goodness. I drew Rat in the very first strip I did back in…I drew him in law school so in 1991, I think. It goes back quite a ways.

ANDELMAN: Is there a connection between Rat being your first strip and you having been an attorney?

PASTIS: Oh boy. I think so. It’s one of those rare instances where I can actually remember where I was, what class I was sitting in when I drew him. At the time, he walked on all four legs, and he didn’t move. I would just draw this rat in the same position in six panels in a row. A lot like it is now, I guess, maybe fewer panels that I would just draw like that. Then I would just write all my thoughts for the day and give them to him, and it just seemed to have some life to it.

ANDELMAN: Has he changed that much over the years? I think I read that, by himself, he was a lot more obnoxious and didn’t quite click, but once you added Pig, it just seemed to work better.

PASTIS: I think so. When he’s by himself, he’s too much. He’s too acidic. He’ll overwhelm you. But I think when he’s with Pig, because of that friendship, you sort of assume that he can’t be that bad of a guy cause he’s got Pig for a friend. It’s a lot like what Cheryl Hines does for Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” At least until she left him, she makes him more appealing cause you figure well, there’s gotta be some soft side to Larry if he can have someone that sweet for a wife.






ANDELMAN: Now I’m sure people are wondering how I made this connection to you and Cheryl Hines. We spoke just a week or two ago, and you told me that you have some lines from “The Office” and from “Curb” up on your wall that you refer to.

PASTIS: It’s mostly from interviews. Like I’ll read stuff that Gervais, the creator of “The Office,” has written or spoken in interviews about comedy. He’s like the top of the heap right now so anything he says, to me, is golden. One of the things he says is that the key to comedy is to create a character that is arrogant and pretentious while simultaneously stupid. He calls that like the Molotov cocktail of comedy. And I think that’s really a key, and I’m conscious of that when I do the crocodiles because the crocodiles don’t think they’re lame. The crocodiles think they’re quite skilled, but they’re idiots. And so, yeah, I’ll look at those quotes now and then from Gervais to sort of remind me what comedy should be.

ANDELMAN: “Pearls,” like “LIO” and “Get Fuzzy,” they’re strips created by, I believe, friends of yours, Darby Conley and Mark Tatulli. “Pearls” exists in its own world, a place, for anyone who’s read it, where zebras live next door to crocodiles that want to eat them and a pig and a rat are apparently roommates. Where did this whole world come from?

PASTIS: That’s a good question. To me, I think that the key to creating a strip is to create it from the bottom up rather than the top down. And what I mean by that is just focus on writing individual strips, make them as funny as you can, and let the characters, the setting, all of that flow from those strips. In other words, the jokes should come first, and they will tell you what you need character-wise, setting-wise, whereas if you create it from the top down, you say, “I’m gonna do a strip where the main characters are like this and they have these jobs and they live in this town,” you’re really tying your hands. And you’ve got to do this 365 days a year so you want that canvas to be as broad as possible. So, to answer your question, I really wasn’t conscious of the world I was creating when I created it. I just did strips that I thought were funny. Even now, as a result of that, I don’t know a lot of the answers to those questions. Where do Rat and Pig live? They seem to live together. What part of the country? I don’t know. It does lead to some logistical mistakes. For example, the Zebra lives next to this Fraternity of Crocodiles, but somehow, there is this family of crocodiles with the dad, a mom, and a kid. And they don’t seem to live with the rest of the fraternity, and they’re also next door to Zebra as are the lions. So the only way I told myself that it works is that one of them is the neighbor behind Zebra’s house, one is to the side of Zebra’s house, and one is to the other side. But I’m the creator, and I’m not sure.

ANDELMAN: Are there rules that you’ve established for yourself over time? For example, in Tatulli’s strip, LIO never talks, and he doesn’t have any intention of anyone in that strip ever actually speaking, although they write notes and they watch television. What are the rules in the “Pearls Before Swine” universe?

PASTIS: I don’t have too many. I know that in an early strip I had Rat’s father die so I can’t have him have a father. I know that. When the predators talk, either the Lion or the crocs, I have to remember to do it in lower case. I really don’t have that many rules, I guess, thinking about it. Maybe there are some I can’t think of.





ANDELMAN: Well, let’s take our first call. Howard, right?

HOWARD FINBERG: Yes.

ANDELMAN: Yeah, Howard, you have a question for Stephan Pastis.

FINBERG: I do. Stephan, great strip. Love what you do.

PASTIS: Thank you.

FINBERG: I’m curious. This is a question that I see on the chat that others have as well - the whole idea of crossovers with other comic strips. Where did you get that idea? I think, of all the strips out there, you tend to play homage or take homage with a lot of other strips that are out there.

PASTIS: It’s probably because when I was a kid growing up, and I saw any sort of a crossover, and they didn’t happen very often, I just loved them. I just thought they were so fun. And when I do the strip, I’m really, I guess, just entertaining myself in some way. And since I have always liked them, I try to use them. Nowadays, I know most of the people whose strips I use so I will often run them by them beforehand to see if they’re okay with them. I don’t always do that, but sometimes I do. Like Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, I know them well so I’ll run that by them. And Bill Keane I know well so I’ll run that stuff by him. And everybody really has been very, very cool about it, especially the Keanes. They’re terrific. Bill is great.

ANDELMAN: Howard, did you have another question, or does that answer yours?

FINBERG: Yes. I have one more question for you, if you don’t mind. It’s about the predominance of croc strips. This is a question that is really coming from my better half, my wife, who also is a comic strip fan. She sort of says what’s with the crocs? It is sort of a one-gag variation. She says well, when is he gonna get off the crocs? I guess she likes Rat and Pig a lot better.

PASTIS: It’s funny. I keep a little chart on the wall where I kind of monitor how many croc strips there are a month, and I try to keep it at about seven or eight. So this month, there’s a two-week series so next month, there’ll be less. But the crocs are by far and away the most popular characters, and they really, for whatever reason, broaden the strip’s appeal. And to those people who are in that group or came along later, they don’t like it when I go and do the Rat and Pig strips. Somebody who’s been reading it for a number of years and likes Rat and Pig like your wife, for example, doesn’t like when the Crocs predominate. You learn when you do a comic strip that you can never please everybody. You have to do what you like. But I am conscious of the fact that there’s one group that likes one and one group that likes the other. It’s always a tough balance.

FINBERG: Thanks a lot.

ANDELMAN: Thanks for calling, Howard. Howard is a huge fan. His living room, God bless his wife. I know Howard, obviously. God bless his wife because his living room is full of original comics, original strips.

PASTIS: Oh, that’s great.

ANDELMAN: Which is actually something Howard probably would like to ask and maybe other people are wondering, what do you do with your strips? Are they resold? Do you have a dealer? Do you keep them?

PASTIS: I keep them. We occasionally give them to editors. I will give them to family and friends. If I parody someone’s strip, I’ll usually give them at least one of those originals, and I’ll trade with them. It’s funny. I built quite a collection of other guys’ strips now. But yeah, I just keep them all.

ANDELMAN: I want to follow up on what Howard was asking you about, and I see there’s some buzz in the chat room as well about this. So you do tip some cartoonists off. Have there been others that you have not tipped off ahead and that you’ve heard about it later?

PASTIS: Yes, yes. I don’t know the “Blondie” creator so when I made fun of their anniversary I didn’t hear from them. I don’t even know if they’re aware of the strip. I did not tip off Cathy Guisewite when I did the first six or seven (referencing “Cathy”). I have met her now at the Reubens. She was very nice to me. I don’t think she appreciated some of the early ones, which is understandable. I think if I ever kind of crossed the line it was with how I dealt with Cathy. I think it was kind of too mean-spirited. Maybe I’m getting too soft, but I look back on it, I sort of regret that a little bit. One funny thing that nobody saw cause I pulled it, but I did a series where Rat got lost in the desert, and he ran into “Family Circus” fans. It appeared in August or September. And Bill Keane got a hold of them and was gonna kill them and something like that. Well, in the middle of that, I did a “Funky Winkerbean” parody making fun of that whole Lisa Moore storyline where she was gonna die, she wasn’t gonna die, she was gonna die, back and forth the story went. I did it, and then I thought, “Holy smokes, this is gonna draw so many complaints cause that storyline drew tons of newspaper articles, and every cancer person, survivor, family member in the world is going to write to me.” So I went back and forth, and finally, I sent the strip to Tom Batiuk, and he couldn’t have been nicer. He was great. He said, “Go with it.” He thought it was funny and the whole bit, and I gave him the original and then he gave me a couple originals, and I pulled it. At the last minute I pulled it cause I just didn’t want the flak. You learn over time that there are certain things that draw flak, heavy flak. One of them is any disease, be it physical or mental. It really draws angry response. Sex, religion, politics, diseases, flooring any ethnicity, that’ll do it.






ANDELMAN: Stephan, Messieur LaChase in the chat room has a question that kind of fits with what you were just saying. Have you ever had to substitute a strip because of a taste issue or a news event?

PASTIS: It’s happened a lot of times. One time early on Rat ran for Senate or something against a guy who had died. And right in the middle of that storyline, a Senator from, I think, Minnesota died in a plane crash.

ANDELMAN: I think you’re right.

PASTIS: I can’t remember his name right now, and I think his name stayed on the ballot. And so, boy, that had to be pulled at the last minute because readers don’t understand that these are submitted weeks in advance. So that can create a bad situation. So, yeah, those were pulled. There was one where Pig was playing in the dryer once spinning around, and that week, I think some kids had been killed or shoved in a dryer or something like that, and so that was pulled for half the country. Yeah, that does happen. One really, really unfortunate one that, boy, had the timing been a little different would have just been horrible was I had a strip where the Crocs were rooting for the death of “The Crocodile Hunter,” Steve Irwin, cause his voice drove them crazy, and then three months later he was killed. Man, if that had run that week, I think that would’ve been the end of me.

ANDELMAN: Oh my goodness.

PASTIS: Yeah, it happens quite a lot.

ANDELMAN: That’s a good one to pull. Stephan, we’ve got another caller here.

FEMALE CALLER: Hi. I just wanted to ask why some characters get names, just a few get names, and the rest are “Pig” or “Rat” or “Goat”?

PASTIS: That’s a good question. The original four, I just thought it was sort of funny to not give them names. I don’t know why. I’m sort of proud of that because people take that now, and they’ll say Rat and Pig, and they don’t think twice that that’s just an animal. It’s really not a name, and I kind of like that. But nowadays, when I add a character, I do give them names. Why have I changed? I don’t know why I’ve changed. They do. I’m thinking about it. The crocs get names. Well, the duck doesn’t really have a name. He’s called the Guard Duck so I guess that’s consistent. That’s a good question. I’ve got to go back and think about that one.

ANDELMAN: Well, Stephan, you have two children, right?

PASTIS: Yes.

ANDELMAN: And you named them “Boy” and “Girl,” is that right?

PASTIS: I named who?

ANDELMAN: Your children. There’s “Boy” and “Girl.”

PASTIS: That would be pretty clever. Easier to remember.

ANDELMAN: Do you want to take a minute and talk about classic comic strips on newspaper pages? I know that’s a topic you hate to talk about.

PASTIS: Fire away.

ANDELMAN: Okay. Do you think there should be a statute of limitations for characters?

PASTIS: It’s hard to say. I think a comic strip is like a novel. I think there’s a reason there aren’t a lot of novels that are 3,000 pages. I think there’s a natural length to a novel, and I think there’s probably a natural length to a comic strip. But who’s to say? Herriman ran for forty years or something with “Krazy Kat,” and he was pretty darn good. Can you go for a long time? Sure. Sparky did. It is possible, but at the same time, it is disheartening. You look at a comics page and boy, the average age of the comics on a page would blow you away. Some of these started in the 1920s and ‘30s and some before then. It is hard to understand how a newspaper can continue to attract young readers when they do that, but who am I to say?

ANDELMAN: It’s interesting. I look at a strip like “Blondie,” which, to me, kind of defies logic in that, for years, I thought it had kind of dried up, and I found the last couple years I actually enjoy it a lot more, and it seems to have gotten somewhat relevant and come back. But there are strips that you just wonder are they strictly being kept on to keep some money coming into the heirs cause, obviously, the creator is long gone. Who’s to decide other than the cartoonists who want that space on the page? Who’s to decide when something has reached the end of the road?

PASTIS: It’s a really tough thing for a couple of reasons. One, okay, they do these comic polls, and when they do them, let’s say they do a newspaper-only comics poll. The people that are going to take the time to cut those things out and send them into the newspapers, stick the stamp on the envelope and all that stuff, tend to be older people. And so these older people have seen these characters for 30, 40, 50 years, and they’ve seen a young strip for two or three years or less. And so there’s a dynamic at play there where you’re just gonna lose. That’s a really tough nut to crack. So that’s a big part of the reason right there. And they do these polls, and they make no attempt, no attempt whatsoever, to do what every other poll that takes itself seriously does, which is to take stock of the demographics of who’s responding. It’s crazy. If the average person responding to a poll is sixty-two years old, what strips do you think are gonna be on that list? I could tell you what’s gonna be on that list. I don’t even know what your question is at this point, but I just went off on polls.





ANDELMAN: That’s okay. Would you prefer that editors just make a decision themselves and stop polling the audience that way?

PASTIS: Well, I’ve been able to talk to editors. I went to this features, what’s it called, American Society of Features Editors, ASFE something, and I spoke there, and I got to talk to the editors, and I got to tell them this. I said you try to do these newspaper polls. They make no attempt to do the demographics so that’s flawed. So then they say “We’ll open up to online so we’ll get young people.” And then they take no step whatsoever to stop someone from just cheating and voting thousands of times. And I don’t know why they do that. It’s basically just an invitation to cheat. It’s saying, “We’re going to put the comic in here that has learned to cheat the best,” and that doesn’t work either. So I’ve seen some papers that do it right. I’ve seen the Indianapolis Star did a poll where, if you vote online, you have to give your local phone number, and I think they inform people that they might call the number. And so that seemed to discourage fake votes so that sort of worked. But, yeah, I would prefer that they use their judgment, but it’s not a blind guess. For example, walk around a newsroom and look at the cubicle walls. What’s on the wall? What are people cutting out? What’s on the refrigerator in the break room? There’s an indicator. What’s your kid reading? What’s your wife reading? Go to Barnes and Noble and look in the comics section. What’s on the shelf? There’s a great way to do it. What are people spending their money on? What do people like so much they’ll actually spend their money on? Go to Amazon.com and go to the section called “Cartooning.” There’s one for cartooning, and there’s one for comic strips. Look at the top 50. What’s in there? There are ways to do this even if you don’t trust fully your own judgment rather than to open it up to rampant cheating online or just a lot of old people voting in a newspaper-only poll. There are ways to do it, and they don’t do it. This is a very sore subject for cartoonists, as you can tell by the length of my answer, but it’s very hard for cartoonists to take. And I think the easiest way for an editor maybe to understand that would be to say how would they like their jobs put up for a poll? Like, “Which editor do you like best at our paper? Vote and let us know. Who’s your favorite? Who’s your least favorite? And by the way, you can vote a thousand times in a half hour.” How would that make them feel? This is our job, and when you do something like that, it’s difficult to take. They don’t do that, I don’t think, with any other part of the paper.

ANDELMAN: My wife, who’s an editor at a newspaper, is probably cringing right now. Let’s go back to the phones for a minute. Howard was trying to call in. I think we’ve got him back on there. Howard, are you there?

FINBERG: I think I’m here.

ANDELMAN: Alright. Go ahead.

FINBERG: Stephan, what’s your work habit like? Tell us about your day in terms of do you get up, go to Starbucks, get inspiration, come back, or do you try to bang out a bunch of strips all at once? What’s your style like?

PASTIS: It varies, but the latest thing I’ve been doing is I drive to a coffee shop, and I have my iPod on with songs that I picked specifically, and I have it on so loud that I can’t hear anything else in the coffee shop. Usually, it’s to drown out the music they play at coffee shops. That drives me nuts. I want kind of my own music. And then I sit sort of in a corner where I can’t see people. I tend to have my back to people, and I pull the brim on my cap down real low. I know I look like an absolute freak. I know that. And then I just drink a lot of coffee, and I sit there with a notebook, and I write in script form. So it’ll say “Rat:,” “Pig:,” and then if there’s sort of a stage direction, I’ll put it in parentheses. And I just sit there, and I write like that. And for the first hour, it tends to be really bad, and I always want to get up and go home. And then after the first hour, sometimes two hours, the ideas start to come and more than not, the ideas come in bunches. So if you saw it on a graph, you’d see Hour 1: 0, Hour 2: 1, and Hour 3: 5. It just starts to all roll. And then after about three hours, I will drive home and then I draw a few. But it’s the writing I enjoy the most. When there are no ideas coming, it’s really tough, but by and large, writing is the exciting part. You never quite know what you’re going to find that day, and it’s a lot of fun. I think the only thing that really differentiates me from other cartoonists, and I’ve talked to a lot of cartoonists about this, is music. Most people like the room to be silent, and I don’t. I need the music. I need it to be really loud. So, yeah, that’s pretty much it.

FINBERG: Do you do your own inking and color work?

PASTIS: Yeah, I do. I do all that stuff. I ink them. If I didn’t ink them, they’d probably look a lot better. I ink them, and then I clean them up on the computer and add the Zip-a-tone on the computer and do the Sunday color on the computer. I think most cartoonists do that now. I know a couple like Patrick McDonnell (“Mutts”) who still does his Sundays. I think he watercolors them and then turns it into a color chart for American Color to add the color, but man, I couldn’t do that if I tried.


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© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.