evening pearls

Comic Reviews: The Saturday Evening Pearls

posted on April 27th, 2009 in reviews

The Saturday Evening Pearls: A Pearls Before Swine Collection
written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis
published by Andrews McNeel
reviewed by Richard Caldwell

The Saturday Evening Pearls, the latest collection of Pearls Before Swine newspaper comic strips from reformed lawyer and creator Stephan Pastis, is a riot. Launched over seven years ago, the comic features a mix of anthropomorphic neighbors and their assorted approaches to blue collar living, dating, and abiding by/avoiding the eating habits typical of the natural animal kingdom.

The core characters, the self-serving Rat, the naive Pig, the everyman Zebra, and the bookish Goat, engage in this volume an imaginative series of misadventures, often crossing paths with the neighboring family of ever-hungry Fraternity of Crocodiles- whose speech patterns you will immediately find yourself mimicking to the annoyance of all around you. Meee pwommiss.

Containing numerous deprecatory cameos by characters from other comic strips, especially the more long-running of the Sunday comics fare, it is clear that cartoonist Pastis is actually quite well-read and generally respecting of those that came before.

The approach to comedy ranges often, from parody and spoof to even social commentary, and one easily encounters a strong influence of the likes of Bloom County (and Opus) by Berkeley Breathed, and Dilbert by Scott Adams- the latter of whom apparently played a big brotherly-role in the early days of spreading public awareness to the strip’s existence. At times the comic can go full-on bizarro (in ways almost as inspired as the much missed Far Side, by Gary Larson) to the point of even breaking the rules of the fourth wall.

This book takes fans from Rat’s experiences at practicing law and super-heroing, to Pig’s laments at love and brain loss, to Zebra scared for his life by the new lions on the street, as well as the always silly Crocs.

As cool as they come and most definitely one of the sharpest strips in circulation today, Pearls Before Swine deserves total geeky adoration. Currently in syndication by United Feature Syndicate and found in over 400 newspapers round the globe, let this now on sale edition be the first in your soon to be growing collection of Pastis’ works.

Now peez shut mouf!