Stephan Pastis: 'Pearls Before Swine'

A few years ago, office drones helped anoint Dilbert as hipster king of the funny pages. But those sorts of reigns never last forever, and Rat and Pig from "Pearls Before Swine" have since bumped him from his throne, a move, that at least in part, can be credited to an unlikely source: Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams.

Featuring the adventures of a maniacal rat and a sweet-natured pig, "Pearls" appears in more than 350 papers, an impressive number for any strip, much less one that had its newsprint debut in early 2002.

"Whenever a strip sort of takes off, it's a combination of a lot of things," says "Pearls" creator Stephan Pastis. "One of the factors is just luck."

That could be, but Pastis, a 38-year-old former lawyer, is also quick to acknowledge the help of Adams, who championed the strip when it was a Web-only offering. After Adams gave "Pearls" the thumbs-up, page views went from about 2,000 in a day to 154,000. Hundreds of papers and six books later, "Pearls" has made Pastis a cynical hero for those whose sense of humor leans toward the twisted.

"I'm just as happy as can be," says Pastis, a married father of two who lives in Northern California. "It's literally a childhood dream come true."

"Pearls" takes place in a world where the animals talk and crocodiles have their own fraternity, and the main character this year on Halloween trick-or-treated for booze. Pastis routinely breaks comics convention and inserts himself or other comics into the strip. Last week, panels from "Get Fuzzy" seemed randomly inserted.

Taking its name from a line in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "Pearls Before Swine" refers to Rat's belief that he is a font of knowledge, but that it's all wasted on the dimwitted Pig.

While the egotistical Rat schemes to make a fast dollar and Pig is content to watch television, two other characters -- Zebra (the humanitarian) and Goat (the smart one) -- help anchor the animal kingdom. Pastis believes that every reader can identify with one of the main characters.

So which one is most like the creator?

"I'm Rat," says a laughing Pastis, who describes his life philosophy as dark and cynical.

"I'm all of them and half of me is Pig," he says, amending his original answer before thinking on it some more. "Well, 51 percent of me is Rat."