Pondering Pearls Before Swine

Pearls Before Swine, 2013-09-12.

Stephan Pastis does this sort of joke a lot in Pearls Before Swine, where he makes fun of himself for not being funny and how the comic has been going steadily downhill. The only problem is, for this to be a joke it would have to be not true.

It often seems like he thinks that if he acknowledges the problem then he doesn't actually have to do anything about it. "Oh, this strip wasn't funny? Well, I knew that, that's the joke. It was intentional!" But even if it was intentional, it still wasn't funny. "There is no joke" is not a joke. At least, not on its own.

When it first started, the comic was actually pretty good, and the self-deprecating strips were also funny because "I'm not funny" was part of the joke, not a substitute for one, but it seems like Pastis ran out of funny ideas and just resorted to reusing formulas that had worked in the past, but without the essential quality that made them funny.

This is a problem that seems to happen to a lot of comics, and the reason is pretty obvious. In any other medium you don't get to just keep going forever like this. TV shows end. Comics don't. And even established authors usually can't get anywhere with a new strip, they have to keep making the same one if they want to be paid.

But no premise is an unlimited source of material. Everything stops working eventually. Old comics need to end, even if the authors go on to make new ones. I'm sure Pastis is still funny, Pearls Before Swine is just tapped out.