Tuesday, January 08, 2019

Classical Pearls Before Swine

December 2018, Stephen Pastis introduced a new character in his strip Pearls Before Swine. Franz, the Punning Piano Teacher riffs on composer names.

Naturally, it was a theme I quite enjoyed. Some names are regular staples for puns. Franz Joseph Haydn (pronounced "High-den") and Franz Liszt (pronounced "list") are easy and frequent targets. But that's only the starting point for Pastis:






There's more to this series than just music puns, though. Note how Pastis ups the ante by making each successive pun more tortured and convoluted until we get to the end. 

Will Franz return? Rat only grazed him the first time. I'm hoping Pastis' wit remains sharp, and Rat's aim poor.l

No comments:

Post a Comment