'Pearls' Comic Pitches Book, Tweaks Older Strips

By: E&P Staff Stephan Pastis has been doing some interesting things the past couple of days in his "Pearls Before Swine" comic.

In today's strip, the United Media cartoonist drew himself visiting his Rat character's book signing. Rat goes ballistic, saying: "This is MY moment in the sun .... I'll pound you in the head if you start pimping your own stupid book." The cartoon version of Pastis replies: "Please ... I'm not going to use YOUR moment to plug this month's release of the fourth 'Pearls' book, 'Nighthogs.'" Then Rat knocks out Pastis with a bat.

Yesterday, Pig is shown at the book signing asking a young man if he would like to buy a copy of Rat's comic strip collection. "What's a comic strip?" the young man asks. Rat says: "It was a once-thriving medium killed by decades of mediocrity, fueled by the insidious tradition of older strips never going away, resulting in an apathetic generation of younger readers who no longer have reason to even open their newspaper."

To which the young man replies: "Newspaper?"