Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 18, 2016
December 17, 2016
December 19, 2016
Transcript:
"Its a wonderful Pearls Life" Rat: Very heart-warming. Life is terrible. I'm gonna jump and end it all... Clarence: Wait! Wait! Wait! Rat: Who said that? Clarence: Clarence, your guardian angel. Here to show you what would have happened had you never lived. Like here, look at your good pal, Pig...he doesn't have you around in his life...so he's all alone. So he has to make other friends. But they're not like you. And suddenly, he's self-confident and happy, and his happiness spreads. And the entire world is at peace and the middle east is calm and all races and creeds live together in brotherhood. So you should probably jump. Rat: No way. I have a sickeningly sweet world to disrupt.
Before people throw around words like “blatant rip-off”,
or accuse cartoonists of “copying” some old Sherpa strip or web comic….
even before they criticise the drawing of some artifact ….
or mistake in arcane technical detail….
I wish they would stop and think!
Just because someone has a facility for making us laugh….
a noble trait, in my estimation…
and can cobble together some artwork to express it,
and give us a strip so consistently funny it has attained world wide popularity….
it does NOT mean that person has a duty to have read or seen every other comic strip….every movie…. every television show….
read every book, in the history of the world.
He or she doesn’t have to have a degree in English,
spell every word correctly,
know every tool, method or device to do every job in the world.
Just because you’ve seen something before doesn’t mean every cartoonist is familiar with it….
And a great idea, a good joke, or a perfect pun….
can come independently to several people in different years.Stephan Pastis is still in his 40’s,and spent a good part of his life as a working lawyer….
He may never have had time to read every “old Howard the Duck comic” to see whether he’s doing something similar.
Or to check his work against every parody ever written of “it’s a Wonderful Life.”
He’s a darn funny guy….and I’m sure he didn’t need help.