Wouldn’t it be great if instead of an endless stream of crashed-out, Donald Trump-adjacent memoirs/tell-alls/self-interested “scoops,” we had more quirky graphic novels for kids? And why not? They certainly sell.

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To wit, Captain Underpants creator Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: Grime and Punishment, released September 1, has been the number one selling book in North America for the last three weeks, at least according to Amazon. This isn’t exactly a surprise: the publisher, Graphix, set the first print run at a staggering five million copies, but it’s still a nice reminder for those of us in the more, ahem, literary spaces, that the book industry survives on a wide variety of titles that non-writing, non-publishing people actually read.

Jonny Diamond

Jonny Diamond

Jonny Diamond is the Editor in Chief of Literary Hub. He lives in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains with his wife and two sons, and is currently writing a cultural history of the axe for W.W. Norton. @JonnyDiamondJonnyDiamond.me