Comic artists indulge in April Fools’ Day tomfoolery

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 | 8:12 a.m.

Hijinks ensued in Friday's Las Vegas Sun comics pages, courtesy of the ever-daffy Darby Conley and Stephan Pastis.

Conley, author and artist of Get Fuzzy, and Pastis, the brains behind Pearls Before Swine, conspired to us the same joke in each of their comic strips that ran in the Sun on Friday (see reprints of the strips above).

Oddly enough, Friday was also April Fools' Day.

Get it?

A third comic strip was roped into the ruse -- Fox Trot, which is written by Bill Amend and does not run in the Sun. All three used a Ouija board as the central theme of their April Fools' Day strips.

On Monday, still in mischievous mode, Conley and Pastis offered explanations (of sorts).

"Regarding Friday's strip, I can tell you that I wrote it," Conley said via e-mail. "Some months ago, Stephan Pastis had run a very bad idea, which did involve a Ouija board, by me to see if it was funny. It was not.

"Having written it myself, I decided to go ahead and use it in my strip. And you can ask Bill Amend about it, because I mentioned the whole thing to him that day, and he'd tell you what I just did."

Pastis, also via e-mail, said:

"All I know is that I wrote what I thought was a pretty decent strip and then ran it by Darby to see if he thought it was funny or not. Apparently, he liked it too much.

"I had no idea he was so desperate for material ... In the future, I'll keep my ideas to myself. How it ended up in Fox Trot, I have no idea."

In a message on the Web site www.homepage.mac.com/billamend/ Amend said, "This is the sort of thing that happens when cartoonists get too little sleep and then talk on the phone. If you thought it was funny, I'm happy to accept a third of the credit. If you thought it was annoying, well, blame Pastis. It was his idea."