The bizarre encounter of Pearls Before Swine and Hi and Lois has blown my mind. I disagree with the Comics Curmudgeon, though, as I would say it's slightly more likely as not that this was planned. Pearls Before Swine often singles out old "classic" strips (too often, I'd say; it tends to lose it's impact with repetition, though I always do respond in a Pavlovian manner regardless), and I could see whoever does Hi and Lois these days reaching a mutually-amicable agreement with Pastis, after running into him at the weekly cartoonist bowling league or something, lest he come up with his own hi-larious (see what I did there?) parody, perhaps casting Lois in an inappropriately sexual light.

I warned you, Pearls Before Swine. No good could come from antagonizing the "classic" comics. But while I waited for Mary Worth to bring the pain, I was blindsided by the arrival of the Pro-Circus extremists.

Pearls Before Swine takes on the all-powerful soap opera comic industry. I hope Stephan Pastis knows what all-powerful juggernaut he's just angered; surely we all remember what Mary Worth did to Aldo Kelrast last year, and he liked Mary Worth.

In today's Sunday comics, two strips decided to call out their competition for ridicule (though in the case of Pearls Before Swine, the mockery seems to fall in the category of good-natured ribbing):

Lio attacks For Better or for Worse (which is like shooting fish in a barrel...or, to borrow from Todd Barry, like shooting a barrel)

Pearls Before Swine is a tad jealous of Get Fuzzy

I only recently started reading both Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine regularly, but I'd have to say Pearls Before Swine is probably my favorite current comic strip. I've also started reading Lio recently, and today's strip reflects my confusion about the strip's nature. I was under the impression that one of the strip's signifying qualities was the general lack of dialogue, like a silent film. I knew this wasn't a hard and fast, inviolable law of nature, but still, in the time I've been reading it, it's been awfully wordy. Kind of hurts the strip's charm (the strip is pretty repetitive, and certainly hasn't lived up to my first impressions).

UPDATE: Well, seeing as I linked to Pearls Before Swine, I should probably link to today's Get Fuzzy, too, since it was pretty funny.