Michael Cavna notes that recent story-lines in Pearls Before Swine in which the Stephan Pastis character is having marital problems is generating inquiries into real-life marriage status of Stephan Pastis who maintains he and his wife are NOT going through a divorce.
Pastis admits that he, of course, brings this all upon himself. He has created this snarky, paunchy version of himself as comic persona, he says, and the lines have blurred with readers.
?The character is such a weird hybrid,? Pastis tells ?Riffs. ?Half of me considers him about as real as [the characters] Rat and Pig. But I do sort of use him as a real [stand-in].?
Pastis points to one time he brought true life into the strip, when Staci?s father died. ?That was so serious ? it was the correct assumption that it was [taken from my own life],? the cartoonist says.
This strip ran Sunday.
Don’t he and that ‘Leo’-strip-guy got a thing goin’ on? Has he been cleared on the steroid use allegations? Check out da size of his drawing hand…just sayin’.
I just kicked my husband out of the house, but I don’t broadcast it all over the funny papers!
I have read the comics since I could first read. I am 83 years old now and still read the comics.
I think Stephan Pastis is the best cartoonist I have ever read.