This cartoonist is a rat (also a pig?)

When cartoonist Stephan Pastis decides to stop drawing his popular “Pearls Before Swine” strip, he isn’t going to retire to a shack in the woods.

Though he admits he’s halfway there already.

“I think we’re kind of hermits to begin with. You do something in a room by yourself for 10 hours a day, so I think it’s in our nature. That’s why the tours are so much fun for me,” he said last week in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Rosa, California.

“The tours” are book tours — trips that take him around the country and the world — to promote his compilation of strips centered around a cast of dysfunctional animals and his best-selling “Timmy Failure” children’s books.

On Monday, his current tour brings him to Tacoma’s Broadway Center for the Performing Arts.

“It’s a very un-hermit-like couple of weeks. It’s a nice contrast to what I normally do,” Pastis said.

And if his son or daughter should ever ask him if they can take over the strip that currently runs in 750 newspapers?

“Do your own strip. There’s no way. It’ll never happen,” Pastis said. He minces no words when it comes to so-called legacy strips such as “The Family Circus” and “Dennis the Menace,” whose creators are dead.

“It’s such a terrible practice that ensures there will be no new cartoonists,” Pastis said. “Imagine if Van Gogh is dying, but it’s OK because he has a son. Are we that cheap of an art form that you just pass it on?”

Pastis’ current book tour is for a “Pearls Gets Sacrificed: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury,” due out Tuesday . The book represents 18 months of strips, most of them with commentary by Pastis.

Pastis is now working on the fifth book in the “Timmy Failure” series. The kid-lit stories revolve around a clueless kid detective.

“He’s a moron. He can’t solve anything. And he’s got a polar bear as a business partner,” Pastis said.

“Failure” is a success. The first book spent half a year on the New Times best-seller list and was translated into 35 languages.

“Pearls” readers who want insight into who Pastis really is need look no further than Rat.

“Rat is my most natural voice. It’s the voice I would write for all day if I could,” Pastis said. “I have to watch how often I use him. His caustic, sarcastic, bombastic self would burn people out.”

Misanthropic Rat and dim-witted Pig are the stars of the strip. Though “pearls before swine” is originally from the Bible, Pastis uses it in reference to Rat. The rodent thinks he’s wasting his pearls of wisdom on Pig.

There’s a revolving cast of characters in “Pearls” that Pastis uses with some regularity.

“People have favorites, and when their characters don’t get enough playing time they get upset.”

That also makes it hard to introduce new characters.

“People say, ‘Hey, I don’t like — fill in name of new character. Why don’t you just go back to — fill in name of existing character?’ It’s always the same thing. I can show you those emails when Duck appeared, when the crocs appeared. You just have to follow your instinct,” Pastis said.

One type of character you’ll see very little of in “Pearls”: cats and dogs.

“There’s too many of them. They’re everywhere,” Pastis said of cartoon cats and dogs.

There is a big fluffy cat who makes occasional appearances in “Pearls” and a dog on a chain was a recurring character in years past.

“Then I got tons and tons of complaint letters from animal rights groups telling me that animals shouldn’t be on chains. I had to remind them he’s not real. He’s only ink on paper. Don’t worry. He’ll be OK,” Pastis recalled.

Lately, the crocs in “Pearls” have been reflecting a period in Pastis’ life. The croc dad is having some serious separation issues as his son leaves home for college. The same thing is happening to Pastis. His son just left for college.

“That is a very hard experience. That is such a heavy moment for parents,” Pastis said. “If there is ever a dividing moment between childhood and adulthood, that is it. You are sending him into the world.”

Another big moment in Pastis’ life came last year when revered cartoonist Bill Watterson, the creator of “Calvin and Hobbes,” came out of retirement to draw “Pearls” for a few days.

For “Calvin” and cartoon fans in general it was as if Bigfoot had suddenly appeared in a meadow.

“Watterson is part of the big three: (Gary) Larson, (Berkeley) Breathed and Watterson. All three were hitting their peak at the same time,” Pastis said. “ ‘Calvin’ was the be-all end-all, about as good as a strip could be done.”

But Watterson is more enigmatic than the others, according to Pastis.

“He is our Greta Garbo or J.D. Salinger or Howard Hughes. A total recluse. You’re not even sure if he’s alive or was ever alive,” Pastis said. “Google image him and you’ll find one or two images. In this age there’s a guy on Earth that famous with just two photos.”

The collaboration with Watterson came about after Pastis used a mutual acquaintance to request a meeting.

“The answer was no. So, I just forgot about it.”

But the go-between urged Pastis to email Watterson nonetheless.

“I told him everything I thought about ‘Calvin’ and what a big influence he was on me. I was hoping to just get a reply and frame it.”

Pastis got a reply. And an invitation.

“He said, ‘What would you think if I drew your strip for a few days’?”

“I wrote back and said I will do anything you want including setting my hair on fire,” Pastis recalled, still incredulous.

The only condition: Pastis could not reveal who his collaborator was before the strips were finished running.

But anyone familiar with Pastis’ self-admitted lack of drawing skill and Watterson’s stylized art could tell something unusual was happening when the strips ran in June 2014.

When the story broke it made international news.

“I did interviews from South America to Dublin. You name it. He wasn’t going to do the interviews, so it had to be me.”

Pastis’ artistic talents, or lack thereof, were the running joke in the three Watterson strips. Pastis long ago developed a thick skin regarding criticism.

“If you succeed at it, years later they will call it style. So, I don’t get that crap anymore. But I don’t think the average person, in this day and age of ‘South Park,’ cares.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 6:00 PM with the headline "This cartoonist is a rat (also a pig?)."