Editing Stephan Pastis
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The character [[Rat (Pearls Before Swine)|Rat]] came from Pastis's earlier strip, ''Rat''. The character [[Pig (Pearls Before Swine)|Pig]], who is Rat's opposite, had been featured in ''The Infirm'', which was about an attorney who numbered an evil pig farmer among his clients. Although Pastis had developed the characters, they were still just stick figures with jokes. One day in 1996, Pastis drove to an ice rink in Santa Rosa where [[Charles Schulz]], the creator of ''[[Peanuts (comic strip)|Peanuts]]'', had his coffee every day. The meeting did not begin auspiciously, as Pastis blurted out: "Hi, Sparky [Schulz's nickname], my name is Stephan Pastis and I'm a lawyer." Schulz turned pale, thinking Pastis was there to serve him with a subpoena. But he recovered, and Pastis remembers Schulz's graciousness: <blockquote>I was a total stranger to him, and he let me sit down at his table and we talked for an hour. I took a picture with him. He looked at some of the strips that I had been doing and gave me some tips. Man, I was on cloud nine.<ref name="Chron" /></blockquote> |
The character [[Rat (Pearls Before Swine)|Rat]] came from Pastis's earlier strip, ''Rat''. The character [[Pig (Pearls Before Swine)|Pig]], who is Rat's opposite, had been featured in ''The Infirm'', which was about an attorney who numbered an evil pig farmer among his clients. Although Pastis had developed the characters, they were still just stick figures with jokes. One day in 1996, Pastis drove to an ice rink in Santa Rosa where [[Charles Schulz]], the creator of ''[[Peanuts (comic strip)|Peanuts]]'', had his coffee every day. The meeting did not begin auspiciously, as Pastis blurted out: "Hi, Sparky [Schulz's nickname], my name is Stephan Pastis and I'm a lawyer." Schulz turned pale, thinking Pastis was there to serve him with a subpoena. But he recovered, and Pastis remembers Schulz's graciousness: <blockquote>I was a total stranger to him, and he let me sit down at his table and we talked for an hour. I took a picture with him. He looked at some of the strips that I had been doing and gave me some tips. Man, I was on cloud nine.<ref name="Chron" /></blockquote> |
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In addition to ''Peanuts'', Pastis drew |
In addition to ''Peanuts'', Pastis drew the popular comic strip:P ''[[Dilbert]]''. <blockquote>What worked for me personally was to study the writing of Dilbert. I just bought a bunch of Dilbert books and studied how to write a 3-panel strip. Then I showed them to a group of people who were acquaintances (but not quite friends) in order to get their honest assessment of which ones were funny and which ones weren't. As to the ins and outs of getting syndicated, I bought a book called ''Your Career in the Comics'' by Lee Nordling.<ref name="blog">{{cite web |first=Stephan |last=Pastis |work=The Official Pearls Before Swine Blog |title=About |date=30 December 2008 |url=http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/about/ |access-date=August 29, 2011}}</ref></blockquote> |
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Pastis drew about 200 strips for the new comic and selected 40 of the best, but fearing more rejection, let them sit on his basement counter for the next two years. Only in 1999, when he visited the grave of a college friend who had been a free spirit and had encouraged him to be the same, did he overcome his fear and submit the strips to three different syndicates, including [[United Features]]. United took the unprecedented step of first running the strips on [[Comics.com]] to gauge reader response. When [[Scott Adams]], ''Dilbert'''s creator, whom Pastis had never met, endorsed the strip, the response "went through the roof".<ref name="rsmith91"/> |
Pastis drew about 200 strips for the new comic and selected 40 of the best, but fearing more rejection, let them sit on his basement counter for the next two years. Only in 1999, when he visited the grave of a college friend who had been a free spirit and had encouraged him to be the same, did he overcome his fear and submit the strips to three different syndicates, including [[United Features]]. United took the unprecedented step of first running the strips on [[Comics.com]] to gauge reader response. When [[Scott Adams]], ''Dilbert'''s creator, whom Pastis had never met, endorsed the strip, the response "went through the roof".<ref name="rsmith91"/> |