Peanuts Reigned Supreme For 50 Years, But 26 Years Later, It Only Has 1 True Successor

Entertaining readers for over a century, comic strips have long since enjoyed impressive degrees of exposure, adapting well even to the decline of their home of traditional print newspapers. Completing its 50-year run just before the shift of readership went into full effect, Peanuts enjoyed a massive readership of 2,600 newspapers and a sterling franchise legacy in the decades since. In a real sense, it'll never need to worry about lack of exposure. But despite the challenges faced by other comic strips that have emerged in the years since, platforms like GoComics and Comics Kingdom have allowed for consistent, high-quality daily updates of hit series and archived classics.

But in terms of embodying a similar-yet-different evolution of the Peanuts formula, it's fair to wonder what else is out there for novice readers, those seeking something new, or even just for those who have fallen off the hobby. Introduced on New Year's Eve, 2001, Pearls Before Swine made an impressive first-year splash for itself, featuring intentional homages to Charles M. Schulz's classic, launching an impressive 24+ year run for lawyer-turned-cartoonist Stephan Pastis. While the series certainly takes some darker humor on more than one occasion, and dabbles in metafictional storytelling, the influence of Peanuts and indeed other popular strips shows on Pearls Before Swine shape it up to be one of the funniest ongoing series of the present, and a worthy successor in its own right.

Peanuts' Comic Strip Successor Is So Much More Than A Replacement

If one were to vaguely state the premise of Pearls Before Swine, namely, the lives of a pig and a rat in a world of anthropomorphic animals with the odd human in between, it'd almost sound like a cheap Animal Farm parody. But Pig and Rat are incredibly fun early introductions of similar simplistically-named animal friends, each bearing their own personality traits, some clearly carrying their Peanuts influences more than others. In Rat's prickly personality and comical self-assuredness, one can see shades of Lucy van Pelt rather quickly, with several of Rat's gags being a spin on Lucy's psychiatry booth bit. It's hardly speculation, either, as Pastis himself has stated Schulz's influence via Greek Reporter on his work.

Before "Peanuts", the writing was physical, over the top, but Sparky goes inside the soul. His influence on me is enormous. I’ve taken his backgrounds, the front porch, the beach and the TV beanbag. Rat is Lucy, Goat is Linus and Pig is Charlie Brown. Sparky is a template. Whether or not you know it, he’s the template.

One can see the similarities rather quickly. Pig's dimwitted innocence makes for an interesting spin on Charlie Brown, but with an extra dash of inventive stupidity to make his gags really shine, making him a perfect foil to Rat. Goat is the rational early addition to the core group who helps balance out Rat and Pig's conflict avoidance problems, standing as a pretty solid Linus. But yet, despite embodying traits of Peanuts characters, there's enough refreshing whimsy and wit to Pastis' particular brand of storytelling that can be boldly topical and make for some biting commentary when it needs to. But more than anything else, it gets a great laugh out of readers, even if earlier strips projected an optimistic future for video rental stores which aged like milk.

While backdrops may strongly resemble those of Peanuts, including the Brick Wall seen fairly often early on in Pearls Before Swine, the series obviously wouldn't get away with merely parroting Schulz's work. It can often go a philosophical direction, with regular interludes into darker territory, such as Zebra's family being ravaged by apex predators on the regular, or Rat's recurring nihilistic tendencies. Peanuts had a certain melancholic bite to its storytelling, but Pearls Before Swine has more of an unapologetic side, incorporating creator self-insertion, self-referential shenanigans, and character crossovers to seal its particular brand of humor.

Pearls Before Swine Thrives As A Celebration Of Great Comic Strips

Reading Pearls Before Swine will quickly unearth Pastis' comic strip influences. Beyond Peanuts, classics like The Far Side and Bloom County are recognizable components of the series' DNA. Dilbert regularly got overt references, down to Rat trying to create a series about his totally-original creations, Bildert and his pet Bogdert. Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson briefly returned from retirement to draw for Pearls Before Swine, and it's hard to see why Pastis gets such support from popular creators. His humor is fantastic, his daily strips have a healthy brevity while leading to a killer punchline much of the time, and his satire is so on-point it occasionally needs to pull itself back, such as accidentally predicting the events of January 6, 2021.

The reward for Pearls Before Swine's success speaks for itself, with around 850 newspapers circulating Pastis' work as reported in 2021, a strong readership online such as at GoComics, and multiple awards from the National Cartoonists Society over the years. It's a fantastic series and easily worth checking daily for what new hilarity, cynical takes on current events, or savage reminders for older audiences of the changing times. Despite the rhetorical origins of its title, Pearls Before Swine's highbrow satire is far from unapproachable to a much broader reader base, and is worth checking out for most audiences at least once.

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Pearls Before Swine is available to read on-demand via GoComics.