'Pearls Before Swine' cartoonist coming to Memphis. Here's why and how to meet him.

The roughly 130-year history of the American comic strip is a sort of a Dagwood sandwich of popular imagination, loaded and layered with bold flavors, reassuring textures and risky experiments.

In 1934, a dashing Yale polo player turned space adventurer, Flash Gordon, landed on the planet Mongo, ruled by a tyrant, Ming the Merciless.

In 1960, the usually crabby "Peanuts" character, Lucy, snuggled Charlie Brown's beagle, Snoopy, and declared: "Happiness is a warm puppy."

And in 2005, "Pearls Before Swine," which appears daily in The Commercial Appeal, revealed that the terrorist, Osama bin Laden, was hiding out as an exchange student within the wholesome environment and circle-shaped panels of "The Family Circus."

At the end of one strip in this series, the Family Circus mother, Thel, informs her guest: "I'm sorry, Osama, but at the end of grace, we say, 'Amen,' not 'Death to America.'"

Some readers were not amused.

"When I started out I was pretty irreverent," says Stephan Pastis, the writer/artist/creator of "Pearls Before Swine," in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Rosa, California.

"I think I made fun of the older strips more than was probably comfortable for the older guys. I kind of like to think of my strip in the early years as in the vein of what punk rock was to rock in 1977. The energy you bring to shake everything up, I think that's important."

Yet Pastis, for all his edge, revered the comic strip as an American art form and admired and even idolized its most significant creators, particularly the "Peanuts" mastermind, Charles M. Schulz, who introduced philosophical, psychological and even religious ideas into a traditional gang-of-kids format.

"I see Sparky as a rebel, a game changer and a revolutionary," said Pastis, using the nickname of the artist he eventually befriended. "I analogize him to Brando in 'On the Waterfront' and 'Streetcar.' In the same way that Brando changed acting forevermore, Sparky did that for comics. He showed that a comic strip can be about depression and longing and love and loss of love. Sparky, he's the reason I'm here, for sure."

Pastis, 55, will be in Memphis on Oct. 21 for a 6 p.m. talk — actually, a comedic PowerPoint presentation, he said — and book-signing at Novel, 387 Perkins Ext. Although Andrews McMeel Publishing recently released "Pearls Seek Enlightenment," the 12th so-called "Treasury" (oversized paperback) of "Pearls Before Swine" strips, Pastis' visit is timed to the October release of "Looking Up," his latest illustrated chapter book targeted at what the publishing industry refers to as "middle grade" readers (primarily, ages 8 to 12).

Even so, "I really don't write for kids," said Pastis, whose previous children's books include the "Timmy Failure" and "Trubble Town" series. "I write for me."

Square peg, round hole

Published by Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, and list-priced at $13.99, "Looking Up" is the story of a "square peg in a round world" girl who resists the modernization — the gentrification — of her small town, with its eccentric toy store and greasy hamburger stand. Aided by a mysterious neighbor boy, her pet turtle, and her vivid imagination, she stages a quixotic — in fact, she even dresses like a knight, Don Quixote-style — campaign motivated by an impossible desire: "I want to make time move backward."

Looking backward, "Pearls Before Swine" launched on Dec. 31, 2001, in the Washington Post, and then expanded into other newspapers a week later. In a decision that garnered a mixed reaction, The Commercial Appeal added the strip to its comics pages in 2007. ("That strip says, 'You must think I'm really stupid,'" groused one reader; "Finally, you have a great comic strip," cheered another.) Now syndicated by Kansas City, Missouri-based Andrews McMeel (formerly Universal Press), a company that also handles such milestone titles as "Peanuts," "Doonesbury" and "For Better or For Worse," "Pearls" appears in about 850 newspapers, making it the most widely distributed comic strip to be introduced in the 21st century.

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Set in a sort of unnamed Everytown similar to the one inhabited by the "Peanuts" gang, "Pearls" showcases a cast of talking, generally bipedal animals who interact with each other and various human beings — including Pastis himself, usually presented as the hapless butt of the joke. The animals include the innocent Pig, the acerbic Rat and the treacherous but inept Crocodile family. Although storylines may continue, "Pearls" is a so-called "gag-a-day" strip, meaning that each installment ends with a punch line.

As in "Dilbert," the drawing style is simple. "He has a clean style," said Reed Jackson, 44, acquisitions editor at Andrews McMeel. "Stephan can draw cute animals that are expressive without being necessarily well-drawn, shall we say…"

"If you took all 200 syndicated cartoonists and said, 'Draw a bicycle,' I would be in the bottom five," Pastis said. But, "I can draw what I need to draw." His colleagues agree: Pastis was the 2018 recipient of the industry's top honor, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

'Dream come true'

As the Osama bin Laden strips indicate, Pastis, from the start, was interested in playing with the traditional comic strip form by courting controversy, embracing surrealism, and having the animals acknowledge the unreality of their status as comic-strip characters. A favorite strategy is to have the "Pearls" characters interact with the befuddled protagonists of other comics (in one strip, Pastis tells the star of "Cathy" he can't date her because "You have no nose"). And yet the observations of the eternally optimistic Pig can be as upbeat as "Life is great!"

"Stephan can be very sarcastic and sort of mocking of life and culture, but he can also be very sincere and celebrate it," Jackson said. "He's not afraid to be corny and go for the 'feels' when he has to."

Pastis said he made sure Memphis was on his current tour, which will take him to 18 cities in October. He said he is "a crazy Elvis fan" who has been here "about five times" and who has visited Sun Studio, Graceland, Stax and Al Green's church. Pastis refers to Memphis, North Mississippi and Arkansas as "the genius cluster," because the states produced many of the great musicians you need to listen to "if you want to understand America."

Born and raised in Southern California, Pastis said he has wanted to be a "syndicated cartoonist" ever since he was a kid and read the term in a "Peanuts" anthology. But instead of pursuing that childhood ambition, he went to UCLA law school and spent 10 years as "a litigation lawyer" in San Francisco. "And I hated it."

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All the while he kept drawing, and when he finally sold "Pearls," "it was a dream come true. How many people do you know in your life, that the thing they dreamt of doing when they were 5, whether it was an astronaut or ballerina, is what they get to do?"

A recurring character in "Pearls Before Swine" is a guru donkey known as the Wise Ass on the Hill, and Pastis sounds somewhat Zen himself, at least when it comes to his work.

"Writing is like trying to pet a cat," he said. "If you're like, 'Come over here, cat, I want to pet you right now,' it's going to run from you. The way to pet a cat is to sit there calmly and let the cat come to you. You gotta relax, and then it comes to you."

'Pearls Before Swine' cartoonist Stephan Pastis in Memphis

Stephan Pastis will speak and sign copies of his new middle-grade chapter novel, "Looking Up."

6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, at Novel bookstore, 387 Perkins Ext.

Line tickets are required to meet the author, and can be acquired with a purchase of the book.

For more information, visit novelmemphis.com.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: 'Pearls Before Swine' creator Stephan Pastis coming to Memphis