Category: Comics - Daily

Pearls Before Swine (UM) by Stephan Pastis

NEW YORK, May 29, 2007 - Pearls Before Swine, created by Stephan Pastis, has been named Best Newspaper Comic Strip of the year.

An unusual rat and pig take center stage in Pearls Before Swine, a quirky daily and Sunday comic strip by litigator Stephan Pastis. Launched in 2002, the strip appears in 400 newspapers worldwide.

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the comic strip tale of two friends: a megalomaniacal Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-witted Pig who doesn't know any better. Together, this pair offers caustic commentary on humanity's quest for the unattainable.

Pearls Before Swine has a growing list of fans, including Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams who says Pearls is "one of the few comics that make me laugh out loud."

Pastis never had any formal training as an artist or cartoonist, but he did draw cartoons for each of his school newspapers as he grew up. He holds a degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Although he always wanted to be a cartoonist, Pastis realised that the odds of syndication were slim, so he went to UCLA Law School and became an attorney instead. While at UCLA, he drew a popular strip called "Rosen." It was while he was hopelessly bored in a class on the European Economic Community that Pastis first drew "Rat," a character that would reappear in every comic strip he created thereafter - including Pearls Before Swine.

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Demographic Catagory - Off beat