# Is "Dog Man" by Dav Pilkey a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Dog Man by Dav Pilkey (Graphix / Scholastic, 2016) is identified by: First printing: Graphix (Scholastic), New York, 2016, 240 pp., full-colour comic on glossy stock, pictorial laminated boards, issued WITHOUT a dust jacket — 'no jacket as issued', so a copy offered in a jacket is wrong for this title and there is no jacket price point to check. US-only true first: Graphix (Scholastic), New York, published late August 2016 (the copyright-page printing line reads September 2016) — the census claim is correct.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First printing: Graphix (Scholastic), New York, 2016, 240 pp., full-colour comic on glossy stock, pictorial laminated boards, issued WITHOUT a dust jacket — 'no jacket as issued', so a copy offered in a jacket is wrong for this title and there is no jacket price point to check
- The copyright page of the first printing carries a complete number line including the numeral 1 together with the printing statement 'First edition, September 2016'; later printings advance the number line and alter that date line
- This is the point that matters, because the series became a commercial juggernaut and the overwhelming majority of 2016-dated copies in the trade are later printings of the same first edition — dealers explicitly catalogue copies as 'first edition, later printing'
- Neither the boards, the endpapers nor the 2016 date distinguishes a first printing
- Publisher imprint reads Graphix / Scholastic
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Dav Pilkey |
| Publisher | Graphix / Scholastic |
| Year | 2016 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Children's / illustrated |
| Key point | First printing: Graphix (Scholastic), New York, 2016, 240 pp., full-colour comic on glossy stock, pictorial laminated boards, issued… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
First printing: Graphix (Scholastic), New York, 2016, 240 pp., full-colour comic on glossy stock, pictorial laminated boards, issued WITHOUT a dust jacket — 'no jacket as issued', so a copy offered in a jacket is wrong for this title and there is no jacket price point to check. The copyright page of the first printing carries a complete number line including the numeral 1 together with the printing statement 'First edition, September 2016'; later printings advance the number line and alter that date line. This is the point that matters, because the series became a commercial juggernaut and the overwhelming majority of 2016-dated copies in the trade are later printings of the same first edition — dealers explicitly catalogue copies as 'first edition, later printing'. Neither the boards, the endpapers nor the 2016 date distinguishes a first printing.

## Is this the true first?
US-only true first: Graphix (Scholastic), New York, published late August 2016 (the copyright-page printing line reads September 2016) — the census claim is correct. There is no precedence contest: the Scholastic UK issue, 'Dog Man #1: Dog Man' (ISBN 9781407140391), is a paperback dated 6 July 2017, nearly a year later. Flag a distinct first-appearance trap that is not a first-edition question: the Dog Man character originated as a comic-within-a-comic drawn by George Beard and Harold Hutchins inside Pilkey's Captain Underpants books before this standalone graphic novel — those Captain Underpants volumes are the character's first appearance but are not editions of Dog Man.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No conventional hardcover book-club edition is documented. The reprint field is instead dominated by Scholastic school book-fair and book-club printings, boxed sets, and the later reissue under ISBN 9781338741032 — all later printings or reissues rather than firsts, and identifiable by a differing ISBN or barcode on the board. Since the title is issued without a jacket, the usual club/fair jacket tells do not apply: place the copy by the number line and the 'First edition, September 2016' statement.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Dog Man* by Dav Pilkey a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/dog-man
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.