![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icon_uk posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailyYou've probably heard this story already after it broke at the weekend, but just in case, it's too good a story to NOT share.
"Pearls before Swine" is, to be honest, a fairly standard webcomic.
It's a bunch of talking animals (arrogant Rat, dumb Pig, a violent, albeit delusional Duck, a bookish Goat, and a poor, besieged Zebra whose only goal is to keep from being eaten by his inept and inarticulate crocodile neighbours) with the not uncommon addition that they are aware they are in a webcomic and frequently berate the creator Stephan Pastis (who also appears) for his lack of talent ("Have you considered using talent enhancing drugs?" is perhaps my favourite comment from the Rat)
I only ever heard of it before this past weekened because it's one of the strips (the other being Nemi) printed in "Metro", a free UK distributed daily newspaper of the sort you pick up at railway stations etc.
Mr Pastis is, like many cartoonists, an ardent fan of the reclusive Bill Watterson, creator of the (rightly) legendary Calvin and Hobbes, who finished that strip in 1995 and has never returned to it, or indeed any other strip.
He'd idly tried to contact him in the past, but it hadn't come to anything. And then, some time ago, this strip ran
Skeevy? Yes. Wrong? Yes. But Stephan sent a copy of the strip to Mr Watterson (Which was INCREDIBLY brave of him) and hoped he'd see the funny side... which, to everyone's surprise, especially Stephan's, he did. He wrote back to him and said he had an idea for a comic strip.
The full and quite extraordinary, story is told much better by Stephan than by me, and is here, which I would recommend you read before continuing, I'd post the whole thing if it weren't so long.
And these are the resulting strips
And then, just in case the penny hadn't dropped came this follow up...
And Bill Watterson has also expanded onhis reasons for doing it here
"Pearls before Swine" is, to be honest, a fairly standard webcomic.
It's a bunch of talking animals (arrogant Rat, dumb Pig, a violent, albeit delusional Duck, a bookish Goat, and a poor, besieged Zebra whose only goal is to keep from being eaten by his inept and inarticulate crocodile neighbours) with the not uncommon addition that they are aware they are in a webcomic and frequently berate the creator Stephan Pastis (who also appears) for his lack of talent ("Have you considered using talent enhancing drugs?" is perhaps my favourite comment from the Rat)
I only ever heard of it before this past weekened because it's one of the strips (the other being Nemi) printed in "Metro", a free UK distributed daily newspaper of the sort you pick up at railway stations etc.
Mr Pastis is, like many cartoonists, an ardent fan of the reclusive Bill Watterson, creator of the (rightly) legendary Calvin and Hobbes, who finished that strip in 1995 and has never returned to it, or indeed any other strip.
He'd idly tried to contact him in the past, but it hadn't come to anything. And then, some time ago, this strip ran
Skeevy? Yes. Wrong? Yes. But Stephan sent a copy of the strip to Mr Watterson (Which was INCREDIBLY brave of him) and hoped he'd see the funny side... which, to everyone's surprise, especially Stephan's, he did. He wrote back to him and said he had an idea for a comic strip.
The full and quite extraordinary, story is told much better by Stephan than by me, and is here, which I would recommend you read before continuing, I'd post the whole thing if it weren't so long.
And these are the resulting strips
And then, just in case the penny hadn't dropped came this follow up...
And Bill Watterson has also expanded onhis reasons for doing it here
no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-17 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-18 10:43 am (UTC)I think Pastis has destroyed all of those strips.