Fun, funny, and likely to draw new fans to the dynamic duo.
In new and reworked episodes of the webcomic “Doug Eat Dog” recast into graphic format, a small chocolate Lab finds herself part of a growing household.
Fans of the long-running cartoon series will find themselves in familiar territory as a frisky pooch accustomed to “infinite attention and belly rubs” is suddenly forced to accommodate some distracting new arrivals—notably genius kittens Chewy and Equinox, and a big-headed “hairless meatball” named Doug whose first, and only, word is an endearing “Bak!” Squirrels, a spider named Carl, Constance the closet monster, and other occasional guests wander in for cameos, and though some raucous playtimes are cast into short storylines (e.g., “Commander Doug vs. the Labradorian” and “The Fast and the Furriest”), most pages are, like the original strips, discrete incidents with punchlines in the final panels. If the mix of adult-sounding dialogue (“Hey! You’re not allowed on the furniture!” “What part of we’re cats do you not understand?”) and broad humor is reminiscent of “Calvin and Hobbes,” there’s plenty of snuggling and dancing to give the hijinks a cozily domestic tone all their own. And, following a partial cast list at the end, Anderson adds a practical tidbit with the observation that dogs actually sweat through their paws. “So when they give you their paw, you’re actually shaking their armpit.” Good to know. The bright, dynamic art accentuates the characters’ hilariously expressive faces.
Fun, funny, and likely to draw new fans to the dynamic duo. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781958325148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marble Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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