My computer screen was so bright that I couldn't even see the weird after-images on my avatar towards the end of the video, so uh, pretend those aren't there

Maturing is realizing Diary of a Wimpy Kid is just 200 pages of Family Guy cutaways with a plot

I distinctly remember learning weaponized incompetence from Rodrick in one of these books when he tells Greg that if you screw something up enough you never have to do it again

Im not gay greg

36:23 Dude no, these books are still CRAZY popular, you have no idea. I'm a librarian, and these things get checked out. ALL. THE. TIME. I probably have all the titles memorized from the amount of times I've reshelved them, it's wild.

I love that Rodrick's actor was also in SAW and fucking melts a guy with acid for letting his dad die.

Imagine meeting someone who has like 30 diaries cataloging almost their entire life. If this were real it would be an incredible piece of outsider art crossed with an autobiography. Greg is truly an insane person and I love him for that.

My theory is that Greg stopped when middle school ended and found his diary’s when he got older and cashed in and sold them as legit published books and made more later

i like how jeff kinely didn't want the deep end to have heavy covid 19 refrences so it won't be irrelevant in a few years but later adds a werewolf vampire as an obvious homage to twilight like it wasn't a dead franchise for 8 years at that point

"The Last Straw" refers to Dad getting fed up with Greg's act and planning to ship him off to military academy. "This is the last straw, Greg!"

Calling Greg a sociopath is a bit of an understatement. Kid's a legitimate danger to society.

I feel like the first Rowley’s book should’ve had been like a retelling of the first book in Rowley’s pov for like a fun gimmick

Steve Zahn was casted PERFECTLY for the movies tho, he is so good at being that dad who’s had it up to here all the time and has those crazy eyes when he’s mad.

Fun little fact about Hard Luck, in most of the drawings, you can find hidden eggs just in the background, just behind stuff, and ive never seen anybody talk about it online

Fun Fact: Diary of a Wimpy Kid was originally a really long book on Funbrain. Then, when it was adapted into a paper book, Jeff Kinney had to cut quite a bit out. The material that was cut out then turned into multiple plot points in Rodrick Rules, which is why that one essentially feels like an expansion of the first one.

One of my friends lives down the street from the author’s bookstore. One night as I was driving her home she pointed out the light was on in the top floor of the bookstore and said, “Oh, Jeff must be writing!” Apparently her family has known him since before he started the series lol

I remember my dad took my brother and I to see one of the movies, and for years he quoted the "Who put General GRANT on the THERMOSTAT?!" quote that the dad said. It got him into painting miniatures for a little while, though he preferred Roman soldiers.

Just remember. It’s a Journal, not a diary 🗣️

The Shel Silverstein jumpscare sent shivers down me timbers. Also as a band kid, $600 for a French horn sounds generous. The drums I march are usually up in the THOUSANDS.

The worst thing Susan ever did was when Greg told her Rodrick said a curse word, and she asked what It was, so he spelled It out, only for her to punish him with a bar of soap In his mouth for knowing how to spell a curse word, while Rodrick got off scot free.

I like to think every book has the same amount of pages because Greg is just buying the same blank diary over and over

One of my biggest childhood repressed memories was in 4th grade when one of my classmates vandalized my copy of DOAWK dog days so i took a page out of greg heffley's book and put a thumbtack on his seat like the spiked ball from Roderick rules I still have not been caught to this day. Im sorry Franklin.

The Long Haul book was made specifically so it could be adapted into a movie. It said that in the movie diary about it. That's why it focused on the Heffley family and had them get into more outlandish situations than any of the other books up to that point.

I dont think you want more Greg in Diper Overload. Every page including Greg in a book with Diaper in the title risks a reference to "Greg Hefley, Diaper Hand!"

27:50 i like to believe that greg is so used to his families dysfunction that seeing a genuinely healthy family relationship is too jarring for him to handle and that's why he calls for help.

What makes Gregory's character so great is that he's an a-hole and the books play it completely straight. He's not some deep character analysis about the duality of man like many YT videos have you believe.

NGL the cheese touche was the absolute BAIN of my existence in elementary school

Plot twist: the page at 1:06:57 wasn't a printing or editing error. That was Greg's true demon form unleashing itself from his façade of adolescent mortality.

Should’ve read the Movie Diary on The Long Haul. It’s actually really interesting to read knowing how much of a failure the movie was.

This series has been going on for almost 17 years and Greg is still in middle school.

Fun Fact: Jeff Kinney came to my school back in primary school and in my classroom, a student asked how many books was he going to make (most recent book was hard luck) and Jeff said 10. Clearly we are past that

when you said "girlfriend-free boy" i was attacked by incredibly uncomfortable flashbacks to chris chan's mortifying time on the internet

That little skit where Mark talked about the "Die" comic he made as a kid was hilarious and my favorite part of the video

Originally Ugly Truth was supposed to be the last book, like season 3 Spongebob and the first movie, but the series just kept getting picked up.

Glad I'm not the only psycho who owns almost every Diary of a Wimpy Kid book

When i was a kid, Hard Luck was always my favorite book. every single one of my friends disagreed with me, and the internet also wasn't the biggest fan of the entry either. I cannot express how much i feel validated by watching this video. great watch btw

If big Nate doesn’t make a cameo in the end credits in the next diary of a wimpy kid book ima riot.

I work with kids from Elementary and Middle school, and I promise you that Diary of a Wimpy kid is still very popular. Almost as much as it was when I was their age

They should’ve made Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Ugly Truth movie because it was about growing up and puberty in 8th grade, and since the actors were growing up it could’ve been nice

My theory is that Rowley has died several times through the book, but has the ability to reset time to prevent his own death. Every time he does it, it resets the clock, which is why they're still in middle school. Rowley fell off the big wheel and broke his neck, got poisoned by the cheese, got his burn infected, etc.

I love how after the third book, the series just gave up on having each sequel progress through Greg’s middle school years, and from that point forward the story just exists in a perpetual present where no one grows older and nothing changes, solely because they knew they were going to make more sequels at that point, and didn’t want to leave middle school.

I remember finding it really jarring when the Mingos, who first appeared in Hard Luck, reappeared in The Meltdown since side characters seem to essentially disappear after a while.

Worst to best with timestamps, you get the drill: 18. Old School (1:03:24) 17. Wrecking Ball (1:23:48) 16. The Deep End (1:33:28) 15. Big Shot (1:42:52) 14. Double Down (1:08:23) 13. The Long Haul (56:49) 12. The Getaway (1:13:24) 11. Diper Överlöde (1:50:57) 10. The Last Straw (17:35) 9. Cabin Fever (38:02) 8. The Meltdown (1:18:35) 7. No Brainer (1:55:13) 6. Rodrick Rules (10:14) 5. The Ugly Truth (32:52) 4. The Third Wheel (44:45) 3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (3:04) 2. Dog Days (25:27) 1. Hard Luck (50:32) EXTRA: The Wimpy Kid Do-it-yourself Book (23:23) The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary (30:30) Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid (1:28:35) Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure (1:37:55) Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories (1:47:25)

If Jeff ever makes a book focused on Manny he has to call it “One Two Manny” or the world will burn

In hard luck, there are literal Easter eggs hidden on almost every page. Super weird touch but interesting

I swear alot of Mark's miscellaneous tirades and shit about being Irish are some of the best parts of these videos.

The shock on my face when you said TWENTY THREE books, I genuinely thought Old School was like the third or fourth to last and most people stopped reading them right around when I did, I can’t believe I barely made it halfway

4:17 The fact that Kinney made something entertaining despite not having much a plot just makes the first DOWK that much more impressive

One of the bits from the books reminded me of when my 1st grade teacher had us make our own spin on The Three Little Pigs story. In the middle of illustrating the story, I somehow misunderstood one of my teacher's directions as "They all have to die at the end." For some reason, I didn't question why that was apparently supposed to happen and just went with it. In the end, we all stood up to present our stories and I remember panicking when the other kids' stories ended happily. So you can imagine how anxious I was when everyone started questioning why I had the three animals die at the end. The teacher had to step in and tell everyone I could end the story any way I wanted, but either way, I was extremely stressed out in front of everyone that day.

It's strange how similar Diary of a Wimpy Kid's evolution is to The Simpsons. In both, you have a golden age of eight brilliant entries, a sudden decline, and then endless stagnation that feels like an entirely different series than the classic era you fell in love with.

You mentioning Captain Underpands at 1:00:13 makes me want you to read and rank all of them now for no reason at all

Again, the biggest reason for the films success is that they knew the movies only had a limited amount of time with these characters so they could actually have them grow and change. Meanwhile in the books the characters never age and any book has to work as someone's first book in the series so aside from very minor things, the characters can never grow or change in any significant way.

1:31:43: Perhaps this should be the subject of its own video essay -- discussing comic relief-centered spin-offs and why you believe they don’t work, because I’ve always wondered why some comic relief characters (like Sheen, Kronk, and Rowley) don’t work as stand-alone protagonists, and why others (like the Madagascar Penguins, LEGO Batman, and Puss in Boots) seem to work just fine as the stars of their own shows and/or movies. Plus, there are certain side characters _I_ personally wish had their own shows, but fear that there may be a ton of arguments for why that would be a _terrible_ idea.

Wanted to just say Hard luck was always one of the books that I remember most, so seeing Mark agree that it was good was validating that I was remembering it for a good reason. I genuinely love the ending of him going to find the 8 ball and finding the egg with the ring, especially cause in an earlier drawing in the book you see that egg in the background in the spot it’s eventually found. Masterful attention to detail

Can’t wait to watch you rank the Dork Diary books!!

There’s so many entries in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, it feels more like a manifesto at this point. Especially with the picture it paints of Greg as a beaten-down, bitter, angsty pushover that’s just a hair away from snapping at any moment

It genuinely feels like The long haul only came out like 3-4 years ago. Hard to believe theres like double the ammont of books now

I think the best ending to the books would be that all of these stories are just slightly modernized versions of things Jeff actually did so Greg grows up to be the author of his own book.

The Wimpy kid books are truly the most peak forms of written literature ever

I rly liked this video mark, but now you have to read all of Big Nate😭😭

Oh my God I thought I only read like 3 or 4 of these but as you went through the books I went insane because I remembered at least one major moment from every single one. I read ALL of these up until like, The Long Haul, I think? I genuinely, constantly think about the scary movie they watch, Greg in the womb, him finding the key in The Long Haul, Manny unplugging the power, etc etc etc. Thinking back, as an autistic child, I 100% didn't get the point and related to Greg a ton and absolutely took after him. To this day, I will get intrusive thoughts that sound like a Greg scheme to get rich and/or famous. I finally have a place to blame my sociopathic tendencies! Thanks LS Mark!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid has been out for so long that I wonder if people remember that it originally started off on Funbrain (owned by the people who made Poptropica!). That was some fun indoor recesses and computer lab time spent in school reading through all the pages.

38:32 I've read cabin fever so many times that this panel is literally seared into my brain like grill marks on a well cooked brain

Dude, seeing DOAWK acknowledge Captain Underpants was my End Game as a kid.

I wonder if Mark knows that’s the kid who plays Greg in the live action Wimpy Kid Trilogy voices a character in Kingdom Hearts 3.

I forgot Rowley's like, sad D: face is so funny to me just the absolute despair in his face

The problem with the newer books is that they’re always padding out the runtime with convoluted shenanigans and filler. The really good stuff doesn’t happen until the towards the end and then everything immediately goes back to normal at the last minute. I think serialization could be the right step to take the series in. It could keep people wanting more of the characters and it’s a great way to age with the people who read the books from day one. Plus, a lot of great book series are serialized these days such as the Last Kids on Earth or Dog Man.

The fact that this book series was so popular that many of us can remember playing the cheese touch game in elementary school is honestly impressive. These books were so funny when I was younger

These books got me into reading. In 4th grade I got to pick the book we'd do a report on. Since I and some kids didn't have a book we knew we were gonna pick. Our teacher brought in some books for us to choose, one of them was Rodrick Rules. It was by far the book that grabbed my attention the most. Still not much, but I at least wanted to read it even if it was just for a assignment. So I went to school library and grabbed the first book since someone else snagged Rodrick Rules. Thank goodness for that because I instantly fell in love with the first book. It made me realize as a kid reading isn't lame or boring. It's just what they had me read was lame and boring. I will always hold this series close to my heart for that.

This was that series I read all of in middle school, then I blinked to the end of high school and suddenly there were 30 books, two spin offs, three movies, and an audio drama staring Pete Wentz

Never gonna forget how *absolutely viral* DOAWK went with my Year 2 class back in 2015. I must've started it from bringing The Ugly Truth to school and showing my classmates funny bits from it, and then they went on to binge the series and we all went mad seeing The Long Haul reach our library's shelves. And it got that viral that our teacher banned us from saying anything from the book, as some of us were saying or doing things like starting from the book that would get us in trouble, like Cheese Touch and Water Touch, or saying dumb things from the book.

Idk why but i really enjoyed this vid, just a super nice commentary thats different from a lot of other review vids, keep up the good work

I heard someone say Greg will either be two things in life: "A mobster or like one of the main characters on Seinfeld. But either way, people are going to hate him.". Which yeah… come to think of it, I think that’s a shockingly accurate way to describe Greg Heffley, even like a mobster. A good example that comes to mind is Tony Soprano. Now I know people are gonna think that's ridiculous to compare Greg to Tony, but when you look at both characters, there's a lot similar about them both. Both have extremely toxic families, have such a warp perception of what being well-respected amongst their peers means, even coming to some types of epiphanies. Yet, when they do attempt to seek for any advice on something that they feel they’ve done wrong, they both end up falling victim to their numerous bad habits and behaviors, either due to external forces or their own misinterpretations of the lessons people try to teach both of them, therefore end up failing on taking any steps to change their ways. Now I also compared Greg to someone in Seinfeld, to which I still stand by as when you do look at both the show and the book series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is basically the anti-young adult novel. To put into perspective before 2007, a lot of the average young-adult or children's literature usually tackled the typical teenage tropes you usually see. This is even something you'll notice on teen sitcoms too. But usually no matter what these teen characters got up to, they often found their way through it, with the help of their friends/family. With their stories ending on a general lesson for us (the audience) could walk away with. But then there's Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Including Greg himself, a lot of the characters are inconsiderate, ignorant, self-centered, narcissistic, or even sociopathic, like on Seinfeld. Almost nobody ever changes, including Greg. The fiascos that either he or his family get themselves in are usually brought about by their own egos and selfishness. And in almost each of the books, they usually don't end with a general life lesson. Yet, I'd argue that was meant to be the point, both the creators of Seinfeld and Wimpy Kid were trying to make. As because each had characters you shouldn't like, it doesn't matter if you don't like them. In fact, it'd be more funny if you didn't. You could say that Diary of Wimpy Kid, is meant to be a satirical look at traditional teen literature of the past. THE ANTI-YOUNG ADULT SERIES.

Hearing Mark's stories makes me want a Diary of an Irish Lad book

Honestly i agree that no brainer would have worked with ending with greg in slacksville....but then again i unironically laughed my ass off when greg remembering the incorrect latin from his sham latin teacher essentially caused the status quo reset .

This is amazing! 😭 I love these books- honestly, I only started not liking em after The Meltdown™, aside from the last one I genuinely liked the Awesome Friendly series (and Old School is actually one of my favorites 😭) You’ve mentioned “adult Greg Heffley” a lot, honestly I genuinely recommend “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: 25 Years Later”. The art is PHENOMENAL, and as goofy as the thought of a depressing DoaWK spinoff is, it’s actually really good 😭 The creator said they took inspiration from Bojack Horseman, and it definitely shines through!

As part of the population who read the books as a kid, I wanna bring up r/LodedDiper which has this type of fan work known as Looks Like Book or LLBs for short which take pages from each book and have them edited to form another story or with new pages drawn most. Most famous example being 25 Years Later which has the line “I’m Not Gay Greg” Imagine if Greg and Rowley read these LLBs Also, I yearn for the day that we get an actual cartoon series instead of the mediocre movies they put out on Disney+

I can't wait for LS Mark reviewing every single Dork Diaries book in the future.

There definitely wasn't any books you forgot... *cough cough* Wimpy Kid Movie Diary: The Next Chapter *cough cough*

You should rank every episode of gumball (when you get your sanity back)

everyone gangster until greg disrespects joshie 😭😔

I swear to God you can get me to watch a multi hour video essay on literally any media franchise at this point. Im a 30 year old dude that was WAY too old to care about these when they came out back in the day, and yet here i am strapped in for the video

I really hope mark does this with other book series or at least talks about them at some point. It'd be really interesting to see his perspective on franchises like captian underpants, bone and big nate.

I remember finding you a few years ago and thinking I'd probably not like your content that much. A few more videos I was like damn this guys getting lucky with the topics, now I can confidently say you're one of my favourite KZfaqrs. Keep up the great work!

The last straw is called that because that’s the last straw that his dad is putting up with until he sends him to military school

Small corrections: In Dog Days, giving away the dog wasn't a punishment, but just because it was so dysfunctional. And he only wants Rowley's dad to lose his memories of the debt.

38:44 In the US they used to be super popular. I am surprised that it had a comeback through tik tok

My family stumbled on these books when my younger brother got the first one in a book catalogue he got at school. Despite the fact that there is an 8 year gap between him and my oldest brother, everyone loved the book. The dry humor appealed to us so much. Even my dad read them.

A ranking on the diary of a wimpy kid? Never though I’d see one with my own eyes

28:23 I know Mark isn't religious but this whole sentiment was like, the most Irish I've ever heard him get.

I’m so glad u did this bc I was just thinking about getting all the books and reading them as well 😭😭

old school cover was so dope wtf mark

lmfao 21:31 I was playing DOOM when I heard that sound! I was all like "wait, there's no enemies around here."

The thing I always found funny about the movie diary is that to me, it always felt like DLC for the DVD. The DVD (or at least my copies) never had a behind the scenes video so this was the best I got to see what went on.

Dude this book series is incredible i love the first especially thank's for making this video mark ❤️😄

If I had a nickel for every time a diary of a wimpy kid book was about a vacation, I would have 3 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened thrice.

Here’s a fun fact about The Getaway: before it came out I went to a book store and they had a little pamphlet preview that took place right around the Airport segment, and the flight attendant is drawn differently. Not important at all and I sadly don’t have it anymore but still, kinda neat

mark bro the rate at which you are producing these are nuts!!!!

1:06:57: that isnt even a joke, this is a literal page from the book, i really dont know what happened when they published that

So, mark, since you didn’t include the Wimpy Kid Movie Diary,(The Next Chapter) what do you think of it? It was the making of The Long Haul movie…