Review: The Adventures of Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey

It's not hard to see why, twenty years later, Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants is still seeing reprints and now has a movie (which is largely what spurred me to read this). The adult in me sees the cover and title with contempt. This story can't be anything but stupid, I think. But the adolescent inside me snickers at the superhero dressed in whitey-tighties and a red cape. So while the kids all open the book with glee, the adult scoffs. What the adult may be surprised to find is that this is not stupid, not at all. It's actually pretty clever. Yes, it's definitely something better enjoyed as a pre-teen or teenager, but adults can breathe easy knowing that their young boys and girls are not reading trash, but something with real humor and even heart.

The Adventures of Captain Underpants is a graphic novel that combines prose and dialogue with colorful pictures. These pictures do not just serve to enhance the story, but also help tell it. In the opening chapter, for example, the prose explains that the two main characters, Harold and George, are troublemakers, while the pictures show how they cause trouble when they change a flower shop sign from "Pick your own roses!" to "Pick our noses!"

But Harold and George don't just pull pranks, they also create a comic book series called "The Adventures of Captain Underpants" to distribute to classmates. This series features the titular superhero taking care of elementary school related problems, sometimes with monsters involved. But the book is not about their comic book. It's about how they transform their mean principal into Captain Underpants by using hypnosis. But they underestimate how Mr. Krupp, said principal, will take on this role, which is surprisingly well, running around in his underwear and trying to stop, among other things, bank robbers.

Pilkey's prose is simple and to the point. There's a lightness to his writing that gives the sense he is not trying too hard for laughs, nor that he's trying to dumb things down for the age level the story's aimed at. The drawings are also amusing, and at one point they even become interactive, as Pilkey provides instructions for his "Flip-o-Rama" during an action scene, providing a mini-cartoon activity that's as amusing to watch as it is fun to do. The story is also, apparently, semi-autobiographical. Apparently Pilkey got the idea back in elementary school, and it's sad to learn that his teacher reprimanded him for his work rather than praise him. Lucky for Pilkey it all worked out. Not all class clowns get to turn their mischief into success later in life. And Pilkey proves that you can't write something off just because it appears immature and adolescent.