How cool is this?

Artist Stephan Pastis, like other comic strip artists, sometimes makes reference to Bill Watterson’s much-loved and long-gone strip “Calvin and Hobbes.”

Pastis and the notoriously private Watterson struck up an email friendship recently and that led to Watterson actually drawing a couple of days worth of Pastis’ strip, “Pearls Before Swine.”

One of those days’ strips is above.

Here’s Pastis’ blog explaining how it happened.