What types of characters appear in the “Pearls Before Swine” series of books?
Rat (debut: December 30, 2001) is a megalomaniacal rat, and is the strip’s main antagonist (albeit he can be seen as an anti-hero). He is frequently critical of the strip’s style and artwork as well as the other characters in the strip and many other living things. Often self-employed, most of his businesses involve either punishing or defrauding people for their ignorance, much in the same vein as Dogbert, though with a darker humor. Rat lives with Pig in a house somewhere in Albany, California. Rat is the most insensitive character in the strip, except when it comes to his love for Pig’s sister Farina; he also seems to feel some genuine friendship toward Pig himself, although this hardly gives Pig any immunity from Rat’s insults. Rat’s interactions with others are typically sarcastic, condescending, selfish, insulting and sometimes violent, particularly when dealing with what he considers to be exceptionally annoying people and their habits. Rat frequently breaks the fourth wall to b
