The last collection, sorry, Treasury of Pearls Before Swine comics was 2021’s Pearls Awaits the Tide, a celebration of sorts for cartoonist Stephan Pastis’ enjoying its twentieth anniversary of survival as a dying medium (comic strips) published via a dying medium (newspapers), reprinted though a surprisingly resilient medium (paperback books). It arrived smack dab in the middle of the world-shuttering Covid-19 pandemic.