‘PEARLS’ OF WISDOM
Cartoonist brings tour to Hub
Local fans of Rat, Goat, Pig, and the Zeeba Zeeba Eata frat are in luck — lawyer turned cartoonist Stephan Pastis is making his first Boston-area tour appearance Wednesday at Brookline Booksmith for his treasury collection, “Pearls Hogs the Road.”
The California father of two's syndicated comic strip, “Pearls Before Swine,” runs in 750 newspapers around the world, including the Boston Herald.
We recently chatted with Pastis about new characters, his big break and his upcoming movie collab.
How do you go from law to cartooning? That’s quite a leap.
That was a weird one. ... I just didn't like being a lawyer. I was in San Francisco as an insurance defense lawyer; I did it for almost 10 years, and I was never happy. So on weekends I would draw, and I had a book on comic strip syndication and it had a bunch of addresses in it where you submit your work. Like all amateurs, I just sent a bunch of strips to a bunch of syndicates and they promptly rejected everything for years.
What finally gave?
One day, I took a character all along that I had been drawing, even back in law school, a rat. I paired him with a pig who is sweet and kind and balanced the rat and the two of them together seemed to click and the syndicates wanted it, so they tried it out by putting (it) online first. My big break came when Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” read it and told all of his fans to go read it. Numbers were really high on the web, and so syndicates agreed to put it in paper. It launched in January of 2002, and I quit being a lawyer 7 months later ... and I have done this ever since.
I’m sure you must have to try to stay neutral politically when dealing with so many different news outlets. Does the current political landscape inspire your work?
Here's the weird part with Trump ... he is hard to parody because he effectively does it. You need your source to be in the realm of normal sometimes. But I have had Rat trail him. Rat has run for president in the last four elections. So I had them watching TV on Election Day totally shocked at the person who was elected. Instead of Trump it was Rat, who begins to do crazy things. So I have had Rat shadowing him ... I never said Trump's name. You can play with that without taking sides.
You’re coming to Boston May 3 for a signing. Have you been here before? Any thoughts on us? I bet we’d make for some pretty funny content.
I have been there a few times and I love going, but I have never toured Boston or spoken in Boston, so this is a whole new thing for me. I'm very curious to see what the crowd is like. Every part of the country is different — some laugh easier that others; some scowl easier than others. You know what topic I will avoid: When I was a kid I was a manic Lakers fan and the Celtics were ... the sight of them made me angry. Still does.
Your cast of characters has had so much success, are you thinking of expanding the crew?
Yeah, I flirt with it now and then. ... I am always looking. The best characters come about when you don't plan. The best ones always surprise me, and they're usually just a one-off. What’s next for you? I do a series of middle grade books called “Timmy Failure.” My publisher is actually in Somerville. We sold the rights to the book to a major studio, and I've spent the last two years with a very prominent director writing scripts. It's rare that the writer gets to write the scripts. It's been awesome.
Meet Stephan Pastis Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline.