Pearls Before Swine (also known as Pearls) is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis. The series began on December 31, 2001. It chronicles the daily lives of an ensemble cast of suburban anthropomorphic animals: Pig, Rat, Zebra, Goat, and a fraternity of crocodiles, as well as a number of supporting characters, one of whom is Pastis himself. Each character represents an aspect of Pastis's personality and worldview. The daily and Sunday comic strip is distributed by Andrews McMeel Syndication (by United Feature Syndicate until 2011). In 2018, Pastis won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year for his work on the strip.
The strip's style is notable for its black comedy, simplistic artwork, self-deprecating fourth wall meta-humor, social commentary, mockery of itself or other comic strips, frequently experimental formats, and occasional elaborate stories leading to a pun.. It is often cited as one of the funniest and most popular syndicated comic strips of all time.
Publication history
Before creating Pearls Before Swine, Pastis worked as a lawyer in California. In 1999, Pastis first submitted Pearls Before Swine to a few syndicates. Several expressed interest and three accepted it, but they could not convince their sales staff that it was marketable. Amy Lago, an editor at United Media, saw the strip's potential and launched it on the United Media website in November 2000 to see what kind of response it would generate. Pastis recalled in 2009: