According to one source, the Wimpy Kid series is a $550 million empire. One could also say The Mutts Diaries is a collection of comic strip reprints awkwardly shoved into a format that exploits the enormous popularity of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, made by another publisher. The mid-sized, cheaply priced trade paperback is, as the accompanying press release informs us, “a collection tailored for middle-grade readers.” The strip, written and drawn by a cartoonist who co-wrote a deeply admiring biography of George Herriman ( Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, 1986), has functioned both as a daily treat and as a deconstructed, minimalist heir to Herriman and Krazy Kat.Įven though Patrick McDonnell's Mutts comic strip is sublimely designed to work on multiple levels, it comes perilously close to losing its charms in the dumb, exploitative packaging employed in The Mutts Diaries, a collection that Andrews McMeel Publishing has created to launch its AMP! Comics for Kids imprint (what amperage or amplifiers has to do with comics, I’m sure someone will let me know). Mutts, Patrick McDonnell’s sweet, smart comic strip has joyfully chased its tail across the funny page sections of newspapers and book collections for the last two decades. Dear Diary - Today I saw a book of fine, gentle, and artful comics so stupidly packaged that it stands as a profoundly sad example of exploitation.
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