Nighthogs

Nighthogs: a Pearls Before Swine Collection

by Stephan Pastis
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Pearls Before Swine is one of my favorite comic strips. Pearls Before Swine is about the adventures of anthropomorphic (human-like) animals; the primary characters are Rat, Pig, Zebra, and Goat. Rat is dishonest and cynical. Pig is… special. But he’s happy, too. Zebra is always trying to help out his relatives who live in the wild, but they always get eaten by lions. Goat is the smart one, so naturally he doesn’t like interacting with the others.

There are a bunch of minor characters, too. Guard Duck is a paranoid duck whose first plan for any situation involves a rocket launcher. Unfortunately, he seems to own a lot of rockets. Snuffles is a cat who divides his time between looking cute and committing all kinds of serious crimes. A whole bunch of crocodiles live next door to Zebra. They would really love to catch and eat him, but they are far too stupid to be a threat (to him, at least). Stephan Pastis, the writer, shows up in the comic strip from time to time. Many of the other characters hate him.

There are a couple of features that may attract or repel you. First, there are a lot of death jokes. If crocodiles show up in a comic strip, odds are that at least one of them will get killed. Some strips start off like “So X died yesterday.” We’ve never met X, but he/she had to die to set up the joke that’s coming. Also, there’s cannibalism. Half the time, when Pig goes to a restaurant, he orders a ham sandwich or a BLT or something else with pork in it. Yeah, Pig’s special.

Second, Stephan Pastis loves puns, and he goes out of his way to work them in. Sometimes a Sunday comic, one of the really long ones, is nothing but preparation for a single pun. I don’t think the puns themselves are always very funny, even for puns, but I really have to laugh at the massive amount of effort he put into setting it up

If you want to see what the comic strip is like, it runs in several Contra Costa newspapers, or you can read it online.

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Where to Find It

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