so yesterday i got to meet Stephan Pastis, creator and draw’er [i guess] of the greatest cartoon strip alive, Pearls Before Swine… [more importantly, he got to ‘meet’ No_bob, the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin]
The Far Side, on it’s good days [and when it was good it was great, and it was usually good] is definitely up there.
so is Dilbert [Scott Adams who draws Dilbert got me started on Pearls Before Swine and i never looked back, don’t tell him, sh! no seriously cos i used to buy a bunch of Dilbert annuals and now i exclusively buy all of the Pearls books] and Garfield… but with less good days less often… and then Calvin and Hobbes was also definitely up there.
but for some reason, i have come to settle on Pearls. for the moment anyways [or the last ten or so]. i love the characters he comes up with [from innocent stupid Pig to cynical mean and despotic Rat to the ‘outrageously stoopid’ crocs and the exasperated ‘zeebas’ they are constantly trying to eat to the many lesser known or occasional characters such as guard duck Duck [usually seen holding a bazooka] and Andy the god with big plans for his life that are constantly thwarted by the post he is chained up to in his yard, and to the ridiculously silly such as Pastis himself reminded us, Pig’s ‘sea anenome enemy’.
i love the humour – cynical, witty, overly and obviously corny ad punderful on occasion [oh Pastis works for those puns] – the fact that he is the only cartoonist who features himself regularly in his own cartoons and usually about to be ‘taken out’ by Rat for another dreadful pun – the way he is able to laugh at himself, with himself, at us and with others and sometimes all at once.
yes, there is an occasional miss, but even like episodes of Friends, the bad ones are better than most of the good ones of most other stuff. [‘Friends’ is now ‘Parks and Rec’]
i dunno. it’s really hard to say why and do it any justice, i think there is a element of loyalty as i was one of the ones who ‘discovered’ him early on via Scott Adams blogging about him and i am so glad i did – has brought me much fun – and feels like i’ve been on this journey with him from close to the beginning.
[he still hasn’t agreed to create a stuffed dolphin character called ‘No_bob’ who doesn’t in his strip yet, but i think he’s just playing with me… and that the more people who emailed pearlscomic@gmail.com and suggested he do so, the sooner it would likely take place!]
anyways, i was perusing Twitter and saw that Stephan was going to be doing a book signing about an hour away and told tbV and she said we should go and so we headed out. i was expecting it to be a little awkward and stalkery i guess but he gave a brilliant and funny presentation and then he sat and working his way through 100 plus people in a line [i was 46!] posing for photos, drawing a character in each book and engaging in a little bit of small talk with each person. i was really impressed [and i think tbV was too cos she came home and grabbed an old annual and started reading!]. it doesn’t take a lot of effort to not be a jerk and Mr Pastis didn’t do so admirably.
Rad man. So glad you got to meet Pastis and he was a cool guy.