Pearls Seeks Enlightenment: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury

Nobody wants to go back to 2020, but it was fun to remember the little bits of laughter that helped bring a little bit of joy in a dark time. I've enjoyed Pearls for years, but this is some of Stephan Pastis' best work.

I'm fairly new to Pearls Before Swine and find the strip always tickles my funny bone. The puns in particular are hilarious and so well-thought out. This is the first treasury I've read, so having Stephan's comments too with the strip is icing on the cake. Don't hesitate, buy these books!

I'll start out by saying humor is subjective. So is music. What one person thinks is great, the next will hate it.Basically, flip through some of the pages you can read in the Amazon ad to see if Pastis' humor is up your alley. Personally, I love his sense of humor and can't wait for each treasury to come out.A lot of comic authors skimp on their treasury editions and they're really more like what they think are the "greatest hits" strips, leaving many that ran out.Pastis doesn't do that. Even on his own site he makes it clear the cheapest way to get all of his work is to buy the treasuries. Each contains everything that ran in the previous three individual books. And another fun extra in the treasuries are the many extra notes he puts below a lot of the strips. Those are often just as funny as the comic above his comment.So if you like sassy humor (Rat, in particular), you'll love this book.

I will never pass by a new Pearls Treasury. This is a little odd one, taking in the times of Covid and the Washington Riots. There's a few less jokes, and a few more touching strips. Saying that, all the usual stuff is still there. Some of the worse jokes and puns you'll ever hear, and you laugh yourself silly when you read them. How much do I love this? Well for some reason the Kindle version is released 3 months before the paperback, and I'll still end up getting both. Quite possibly the finest daily strip still running

Pearls Before Swine is still in top form in this collection of all the daily and Sunday strips from March 2020 through October 2021. Like all my favorite strips, Peanuts, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes, Pearls works as both individual gag-a-day comics AND with ongoing storylines.Pearls manages to be somewhat topical and timeless. I think the timeless nature of the strips is in the characters we've come to know over the years. While references can become dated over time, the characters' personalities make most of the jokes evergreen. The more you know these characters and the running gags, the more you'll appreciate them. You'll even come to look forward to Stephan's horrible puns!One of my favorite additions to these treasury collections, and one thing I wish more cartoonists would do, is the behind-the-scenes commentary included with many of the strips. I love reading some of the inside baseball. If you ever wondered why a certain strip was the way it was or how readers responded, this is where you can read it. I love that Stephan shares this side of the creative process.The only negative about Pearls Seeks Enlightenment is that now I have to wait until next year for the next collection.