Stephan Pastis, "Pearls Before Swine" cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview, Part 2

(Return to Part 1)

BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: We have a couple people in the chat room who have some questions so I’m going to step in and ask for them. It’s funny because some people are asking questions, and then other people are answering them, for example.

STEPHAN PASTIS: You don’t need me.

ANDELMAN: They don’t need me either. I think they can do better themselves. When you were talking about that Minnesota Senator, the suggestion was that that was Paul Wellstone.

PASTIS: That’s right.

ANDELMAN: See, we just rely on this. And then someone asked, “Where did you get your pre-law degree?” and then the answer came: “UC-Berkeley.”

PASTIS: Yes. It wasn’t pre-law, though. My major was, as all law students I think have, is political science. Yeah, that was Berkeley. Then law school was UCLA.

ANDELMAN: Do you draw by hand? Do you use the computer? I’m trying to think of the device. I saw Chris Brown (“Hagar the Horrible”) use it.

PASTIS: Yes. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I would say Wacom. I tried that, and I couldn’t do anything. I think Scott Adams does it on one of those and I think Darrin Bell uses one of those. He does “Candorville.” No, I just do it on paper, and I draw on a flat table, a flat, old, 80-year-old desk. Yeah, it’s pretty low-tech, but when people see the room I draw in, what they usually say is, “That’s what you draw on?”





ANDELMAN: I wonder what guys who may be listening, like Mark Tatulli and Rick Kirkman, what they use? Just my way to see if they’ll call. I know that they’re out there. One of our chat room guests says that some of their favorite “Pearls” strips involve breaking the fourth wall, and do you have any plans to do more of these?

PASTIS: Yeah, I do that a lot. It could definitely be overdone. Darby Conley said this once to me, too. He does “Get Fuzzy.” And this is really true. He writes the strip to entertain himself, and I try to do that, too. I think you have to make yourself laugh, and it’s sort of hard to do it. But anyway, one of the things that makes me laugh is that sort of stuff. I’ve seen quotes like by Bill Watterson (“Calvin & Hobbes”) and I think one by Sparky once where they say that that’s a mistake, and who am I to argue with them? But I enjoy doing it, and the response is generally favorable. I think putting myself in the strip is probably a bit weird, but I like doing it. In fact, I like it so much. Here’s the size of my ego for you. I put myself on the cover of the next book, The Crass Menagerie: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury, and I look like I do in the strip with the hat backwards and the goatee and the t-shirt, and I’m surrounded by my characters kind of creating havoc in the room. So I get to break the fourth wall on a book cover, for once, which I haven’t done before.

ANDELMAN: And when you’re in the strip, Stephan, are those the days that Darby Conley draws the strip? Because I’ve seen you reference over the years that there are certain times that he writes the strip and that he draws the strip?

PASTIS: He draws my strip?

ANDELMAN: Yeah.

PASTIS: He’s never drawn. He’s given me a few ideas, which I’ve used. And there was that week once where he stole a week of my strips and pasted his own characters over my characters as crudely as possible, which we thought was funny, but I know that anybody who only read “Get Fuzzy” and had no idea what “Pearls” was was just nothing but confused…I think that week had the little, tiny crocodiles attacking a zebra, and in Darby’s strip, there were little, tiny crocodiles attacking Satchel, and I don’t think that made any sense to anyone who only read “Get Fuzzy,” but we liked it. So there you go.

ANDELMAN: Here’s a comment. Someone wrote in: “Our family’s favorite four strips are ‘Opus,’ ‘Dilbert,’ ‘Get Fuzzy,’ and, of course, ‘Pearls.’ What, in your opinion, do these strips have in common, and what makes them so popular?”

PASTIS: Well, I can’t speak to mine, but as to the others, boy, those are three of my favorites as well. Berkeley Breathed was really and still is today just a great inspiration to pretty much my entire generation of cartoonists. I don’t think I’ve run into a guy who doesn’t cite him as an influence. And I’ve been lucky enough to meet him a couple of times, and I feel really lucky. In fact, I put Opus in a strip one time, and he actually sent me a “Bloom County.” In exchange, I sent him the Opus strip. So I actually have an original “Bloom County,” which I just cherish. It’s amazing.

ANDELMAN: Wow.

PASTIS: So, yeah, he’s a big influence, and Darby’s just great. Darby, he can draw like crazy. He’s funny. He has a rhythm that nobody else has. The joke may or may not be in the last panel. The best line may be in the second panel. Breathed had that too a little bit, and it just makes for a very original strip. And he created characters in Bucky and Satchel that are two of the best characters created today. And, of course, Scott, I owe my whole career to. I learned how to write a three-panel strip from literally sitting in the bookstore and studying “Dilbert” books. I always tell people that, too. People that write to me and ask how to write a comic I say buy a bunch of “Dilbert” books because that’s how I learned. All four of them are edgy, too. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but it does seem to me that the strips that have succeeded in the last ten years have all been in the edgy category.





ANDELMAN: There’s certainly a different generation. I was thinking when you were talking about what collections are people buying. I know my eleven-year-old daughter is a huge “Zits” and “Baby Blues” fan so she’s stockpiled those books. “Dilbert” hit a high point where it was a cartoon for a while, and then it kind of tailed off, and it hasn’t quite reached that point. But there’s you and Darby and Tatulli and well, that’s about it.

PASTIS: No, there’s a lot of great strips. “Cul de Sac” is terrific. Richard Thompson, that’s a new one. In fact, I just talked to him last week. I just called him and told him how great I thought the strip was. I think “F-Minus” is great. Gosh, there’s “Agnes,” “Brevity,” “Pooch Café,” “Speed Bump.” “Coverly” is brilliant. “Bizarro,” “Rhymes with Orange.” There are lots of great, young strips. I think the revolution is on, so to speak.

ANDELMAN: Part of the problem is that most people are subject to whatever their newspaper editor puts in there because they don’t take the time to track these things online. As a matter of fact, one of the questions here is, “How do you feel about online comic readers who seek out strips online instead of in the newspaper? Is that taking money out of…”

PASTIS: That’s the great two-edged sword. When United signed me, they signed me to put me into newspapers, and then they backed out because they thought it would never sell. So they put me online to see how I would do, and when Scott Adams endorsed it, the hits skyrocketed, and I made it. That wouldn’t have happened without being online. So I don’t exist but for that. So that’s in the good category. I don’t run in Des Moines. It’s one of the biggest cities that I don’t run in. So if you live in Des Moines and there’s no online, you would never have heard of me, but because I’m online, someone there can read it, and then they can write their paper and tell them to pick up the strip. Those are the good things. The bad things are you make very little money. No one really has figured out how to do this yet, to make money online. So that’s one bad thing. Another bad thing: when a newspaper cancels you, you will get a reader writing you saying, “Hey, my paper dropped you this week, but it’s okay cause I can read you online.” You’re thinking, “No, it’s not okay because I lose money from that.” So that’s not good. So it goes both ways, and I don’t know what the answer is, and right now, I don’t think anyone else does either. It’s very confusing. What should we be doing? Should we pull off entirely and not make ourselves available online? Should we only make a week available? Should we stagger it so it runs behind what you see in the newspaper? I think King Features does that. I don’t know.

ANDELMAN: It won’t make you feel any better, but “Mr. Media” started as a syndicated weekly newspaper column that Universal Press carried about 1996 to 1998. And that was at the time they were just starting to put comics online, on the web, and they were trying to figure out what the financial model was. And part of the reason that the column ended was that they couldn’t find a way to make money online then. That was 10 years ago, and obviously, it’s still not producing revenue for you guys.

PASTIS: Right.





ANDELMAN: Okay. Rick Kirkman, one of the guys on “Baby Blues,” has come out of the darkness and has asked this question in the web chat. He says, “I can’t keep silent anymore. Isn’t it time that you come clean about the dirty little secret about ‘Pearls Before Swine?’ That is that you have to pay big bucks to all the cartoonists whose characters appear in your strip that allow you to do it.”

PASTIS: Oh man, where would I get those big bucks? Yes, that’s absolutely true. I pay large sums of money. Do you want to know how much I paid to each?

ANDELMAN: Yes, particularly how much you paid to Rick Kirkman.

PASTIS: Oh man. He’s a good guy. Rick’s a good guy. I’ve been to Rick’s house. He had a big, fierce, ferocious dog that scared the bejesus out of me. I’m afraid of dogs. You know when you go to a person’s house, by the way. This is a tangent. You go to a person’s house, and they have a dog, and the dog really barks. And the person pretty much always says, “Oh, he’s friendly. He just does that when you walk in. You can pet him or whatever.” And that makes me feel a little better, but since I’m afraid of dogs, it doesn’t make me feel a lot better. When I went to Rick’s house, his dog did that, right? And my heart was racing. I’ve been bitten three or four times. And my heart was racing, and I said, “Well, can I pet him?” And Rick looked at me and goes, “You better not.” And at that point, holy smokes, all I remember from that visit to Rick’s house is how scared I was of that dog. And I know he’s listening now, and he’s thinking to himself, “The dog wasn’t that scary. Stephan is a big wuss,” but I was very scared.

ANDELMAN: I’ll watch the web chat to see if he responds to that.

PASTIS: Hey, by the way, that “Baby Blues” parody, it appeared a couple years ago where I had Rat babysit the “Baby Blues” characters. And Rat was drunk, and he sent the kids on a beer run, and they ran into a gas station and killed the kid from “Zits.” That really triggered a lot of negative response, as if I had let a real person take care of real kids and had them be drunk. It was amazing. And Rick made the mistake of defending me to some people who wrote to both of us, and it seemed they were almost as mad at him as they were at me for “letting” me do this to the “Baby Blues” characters. But, yeah, it was really weird, but, yes, both he and Jerry were great about it. They’re great sports. They’re good guys despite what Rick says about me.


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© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.