Pearls Before Swine to W-S Journal

Great news today that Stephan Pastis’ very funny comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, will be added to the Winston-Salem Journal’s lineup as a replacement for Kudzu. I’ve been reading the strip regularly online, but I’ll be glad to get the “real deal” as treeware now.

In addition to that news, though, the above-linked article contains some interesting tidbits taken from reader responses to the comics contest that was held by the paper to determine what strip would be selected. Among the contenders, Pearls is certainly my favorite (“Single and Looking“ – ugh!). It’s great to hear that the paper has a strong commitment to Lio, one of my favorites:

Lio got a lot of hate mail, but we also heard from diehard supporters of that wacky little kid. For the record, we’re planning to keep Lio. The cartoonist goes too far sometimes, but humor that doesn’t push the boundaries sometimes isn’t usually funny for long.

The two things I’m surprised folks didn’t take the opportunity to complain about were first, the dominance of “dead wood” reruns on the front page of Sundays. Last week, for example, only Zits was new material. The remainder of the front page was “Classic” Peanuts, that weird hybrid For Better or For Worse, and some sort of Doonesbury from not even a year ago. Second, the paper has begun flirting with a truly loathsome practice: shrinking the size all the Sunday strips are printed, eliminating the majority of the “intro” panels (even in Mutts, where you gotta have that panel!) and running a giant one-page add for some dumb-ass space heater on the back page. DO NOT WANT.

Congrats to Pastis, and to the Journal for a strip well-chosen.