The Fab Four of the funny pages come together again-this time in their first book treasury.

Rat, Pig, Zebra, and Goat, the central characters of Pearls Before Swine, are back in Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic, the first Pearls Before Swine treasury-supersized for your enjoyment.

But this is no ordinary cartoon treasury. Like the influential Beatles album that inspired the book's title, Sgt. Piggy is full of surprises. In addition to collecting all of the Pearls cartoons that appeared in BLTs Taste So Darn Good and This Little Piggy Stayed Home, cartoonist Stephan Pastis takes readers on a VIP backstage tour of one of the most successful comic strips in newspapers today.

In Sgt. Piggy, Pastis explains the genesis of Pearls (hint: it didn't begin at an artist's easel), why he was initially reluctant to show it to newspaper syndicates (and the surprising reason he changed his mind), the unexpected responses from readers to his work, and which Pearls strips worked and which ones didn't (and how he would have corrected the ones that didn't). The result is a rare and revealing glimpse into the world of Rat, Pig, Goat and Zebra. Full of humor and insight, sardonic asides and unexpected truths, Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic is a book that comics fans everywhere can enjoy anytime-even when they're 64!

"In far too many comic strips, trendy stereotypes pass for humor, cliches pass for insight, mechanical repetition passes for story, and cut animals designed for merchandising pass for heart and warmth. FoxTrot offers welcome relief from all of this, and not a moment too soon." --Bill Watterson

This treasury edition, FoxTrot: The Works, combines two FoxTrot collections, FoxTrot and Pass the Loot. All the daily strips and color Sundays are collected in one large volume for FoxTrot fans everywhere.

Pooch Cafe‚ is creator Paul Gilligan's first syndicated strip, and this book collects the strips from its successful first year of syndication. When Poncho's beloved master Chazz marries cat lover Carmen and forces them to move in with her and her feline brood, Poncho's world is shaken to the core. Carmen's attempts to bribe Poncho with cheese cannot overcome his inexplicable but undeniable disdain for all things cat, and now that his home has become a haven for them, his only recourse is to seek refuge in the cafe, where he, Boomer, and his other canine pals pore over their top-secret plans to construct a giant catapult with which to hurl all the Earth's cats into the sun. As much as he dislikes kitties, he's equally passionate about his love for Chazz. Poncho will do just about anything to keep his position as man's best friend secure, including enduring the physical torments of Chazz's passion for biking, camping, and mountain climbing, which he can only get through with the help of classic Russian literature and a nice cup of tea. Pooch Cafe‚ captures the intensity of the human-dog bond in a way that will resonate with pet lovers everywhere.

The National Cartoonists Society nominated Pearls Before Swine as one of the best comic strips of 2002.

Pearls Before Swine is an impressive comic strip success story. After only a few years of syndication, it appears in more than 150 newspapers worldwide, was nominated as Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society in its debut year-an unprecedented achievement-and its first book collection, Pearls Before Swine, has sold through four printings.

This Little Piggy Stayed Home continues the adventures of Rat and Pig, two characters who couldn't be more different-or more surprising. Rat is your typical Every Rodent: scheming, self-centered, and more than occasionally manipulative. By contrast, Pig is sensitive, kind, and-even on his best days-just plain stupid. Together with Zebra and Goat, they confront the strange and wonderful world around them, a place that looks suspiciously like our own.

By turns thoughtful and subversive, silly and sophisticated, This Little Piggy Stayed Home is one of the funniest comic collections out there.