The comic clan, while holding their own as animals with an acerbic edge, also, on occasion, interact in the strip with a more rumpled and rotund version of Pastis himself. There is the enraged and egocentric Rat, a pleasant but somewhat dippy Pig, the pragmatic and ruminative Goat, a benevolent Zebra and a fraternity of imbecilic Crocodiles with carnivorous desires. Since “Pearls' debuted nearly two decades ago, Pastis has created a menagerie of characters - though, as far as menageries go, this lot is decidedly unexotic. The anthropomorphic animal kingdom that incessantly chatters inside his head. If it was a normal job, he says, 'you would kill yourself.' The isolation. And now, in a 'top secret project' he's not allowed to talk about, Pastis also is working on a full-length 'Timmy' film production with a major studio that could promote his clueless 11-year-old detective character to the big screen. There, he creates 365 comic strips, two 'Pearls' books and one 'Timmy' book each year. Usually, Pastis shuts up inside the smallest of the studio's three bedrooms. 'It's all tricked out,' Pastis says with a grin. The walls are covered with famous original comic strips. There's a pool table, darts, pinball, ping-pong, a basketball hoop. He's made the space an indoor playground, perfect for his formative 12-year-old self. The place is about a mile from his family's home, in a neighborhood where few people know what he does. The author is Pastis' favorite among the dozen podcasters he listens to when he is writing and drawing his award-winning comic strip ' Pearls Before Swine' and his New York Times best-selling kids book series ' Timmy Failure.'įor months at a time, Pastis, a 49-year-old father of two teenagers, secludes himself in his Santa Rosa, Calif., condo-turned-work-studio. Which puts Nashville pretty high on the trendy tipping point list. If you count the number of cranes on a skyline, he says, you can tell how hot a place is. He rolls in, orders a Dark & Stormy, and sizes up the city from his lofty view.

Stephan Pastis' first stop in Nashville, before even swinging by his Airbnb in the South Gulch, is a rooftop bar.

Watch Video: 'Pearls Before Swine' comic strip creator Stephan Pastis makes Nashville debut

Watterson pearls before swine