Pearls Before Valiant

My admiration for Stephan Pastis, creator of "Pearls Before Swine" continues to grow. Although his normal drawing style is deliberately simple, he's adept at mimicking other cartoonists when he needs to. I've cited other examples, but the best one (to date) happened in a recent sequence. (click on image to enlarge)

His drawing of Prince Valiant is very good, indeed. And Pastis knows his comic strips. For those not familiar with the strip, Prince Valiant is presented like an illustrated storybook. Each panel has text, with an accompanying drawing. There are never any word balloons. And note that when Prince Valiant appears here, his thoughts aren't contained in a word balloon. They're simply a text block -- just as they would be in the original strip.

That fine attention to detail is appreciated (at least with this reader).