Manga Comes to the Times

Now that the limited rerun of "Calvin and Hobbes" is over, the L.A. Times has tweaked its funny pages, adding the strip "Pearls Before Swine" (from Stephan Pastis) to the weekday mix.



Not a bad choice. Now, if they'd only get rid of the least funny strip (and I'm including "Fred Bassett" in this) ever created, the painfully bad "Mallard Fillmore."

More interestingly, the paper will fill the Sunday void left by "Calvin" with manga-style comics from Tokyopop:

Running for 20 weeks is "Peach Fuzz," about a young girl who brings a prissy ferret home from the pet store. That will be followed by "Van Von Hunter," in which the forces of evil have come back to rip peace from the twice-peaceful Kingdom of Dikay.