Every time I have mentioned Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid works, I usually opined that they weren’t, really, specimens of cartooning because the pictures merely illustrated the text and didn’t add any new narrative information. And that’s what comics generally do: the pictures add new information to the verbiage, and together, words and pictures create a meaning neither conveys alone without the other. But I’ve finally read more than a page or two of one of the Wimpys, and I must revise my estimate: Kinney’s pictures often add to the meaning of the words, sometimes by satirically contradicting them.
For the newest manifestation of the Wimpy phenomenon, Abrams is printing six million copies. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever is due out on November 15th. The last three volumes of the Wimpy Kid series, according to ICv2.com, have all topped overall bestseller lists, and the six million first printing of Cabin Fever is the largest announced so far for 2011. According to USA Today, the events in Cabin Fever were inspired by a snowstorm in Massachusetts last winter that trapped Kinney in his home without power or heat.
Comments