Stephan Pastis, Creator of Pearls Before Swine

Charles Schulz was an inspiration to Pastis, who met the famed Peanuts creator, rather intentionally on his part, at Sparky's arena in Santa Rosa, California. On learning that Pastis was a budding cartoonist and not a lawyer there to give him legal hassles, Charles Schulz spent "close to an hour talking to me about my strip and cartooning, treating me as a full-fledged member of this cartooning community, when in fact, I was just a nobody and he was a giant in the field," Pastis told readers on Washington Post's Live Online Chat in August, 2002. "When we were done, I had someone take a picture of us together and that photo still hangs above my drawing board." Now that's a treasure.

In July of 2002, Stephan Pastis gave up practising law to take up a part-time job. It's no fluff job to a true cartoon aficionado - he now works at Creative Associates on Monday to Wednesday, examining proposals for licensing the "Peanuts" characters. His mission is to make certain the integrity of Charles Schulz' work remains consistent and intact through the licencees. Pastis creates Pearls Before Swine Thursday to Saturday, drawing seven strips a week.

Pastis met his wife Staci when they were both students at the University of California at Berkeley. They married in 1993 and have a young son, Thomas. Due to Pearls Before Swine appearance on the Web first, then started over again in the newspaper, Pastis is at least seven months ahead of schedule in his work. Hey, no use stopping a good thing now.

Have a taste of Rat and Pig on comics.com: *(1) http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/

Read the short interview of Stephan Pastis with Jory John: *(2) http://www.orion-online.net/vnews/displa...

Stephan Pastis on Live Online Chat in August, 2002: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liv...

Ta da! The very first Pearls Before Swine book is available at Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksea...