Name A Better Duo
Captain Underpants and Dog Man Have Invaded My Home
Hello, readers.
So last year we walked into my public library and my daughter spotted a brand new Free Little Library outside of the Children’s Section.
It was hard to miss. It was bright red and it had a giant cardboard cutout of Dog Man next to it. Inside was at least 50 copies of the new Dog Man book at the time, The Scarlet Shredder.
Up until this point, my daughter had never heard of Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man, but never being one to pass up a free book in one of these things, my daughter helped herself to the new book (despite being 3 years old and not being able to read). I kind of rolled my eyes a little, because a) I thought she was never ever going to read it and b) c’mon, like really, Dog Man? Isn’t that a little, um, dumb?
Well, she thought the book looked cool (it really does) and she put it into her library book tote and made her way in to pick out a few picture books more appropriate for her illiterate age group.
Now up until this point, my only real experience with Dog Man was with a few reluctant readers who regularly checked them out in my own Middle School library. We have a section of books labeled “E for Everyone” which has a few elementary school titles, like Dr. Seuss, classic picture books, and a few other titles like Captain Underwear (Pilkey’s other widely popular book) and of course, Dog Man.
I’ve flipped through it once or twice, and at first glance, the drawings looked a little amatuer (I learned that’s the point) and the stories are beyond a little silly (I learned that that’s also the point). If you don’t know what the hell Dog Man is about, here’s the gist: it’s a comic created by the kids from Captain Underpants where a cop and his dog are blown up by a bomb, so surgeons fuse the dog’s head to the cop’s body and create Dog Man, who fights an evil cat (Petey) who wants to create evil clones. Also, there is a cyborg fish. Also, buildings that come to life and attack everyone.
Pretty dumb right? “But it serves a certain purpose, I guess,” I used to think to myself. Also, I knew the author, Dav Pilkey, was regularly fighting the good fight against censorship since his Captain Underpants books are constantly being challenged by humorless parents and misguided members of the public who haunt school and library board meetings. So the books will always stay and I think I might have even re-ordered a few replacements for our most beat-up copies. It wasn’t for me, but I was a Dav Pilkey “ally.”
Cut to this year. My daughter was rummaging through her bookcase looking for a book for me to read to her before bed, and out came The Scarlet Shredder. Really? This one? Not The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners for the 1,000th time or one of our countless Golden Books?
“Yeah, I love Dog Man. Read it,” she ordered.
Even though she had never previously read one of these books, she somehow understood what Dog Man is and that it was obviously cool—I mean c’mon, it’s a comic book about a Dog who can act like a man and solve crimes. For her age group, he and Captain Underpants are well-known brands or cultural entities that somehow kids just know about, and being in the know reflects a certain cachet.
And it’s not a fad—Captain Underpants and Dog Man combine to have sold over 90 million copies worldwide. There’s a good chance there’s a Captain Underpants in your home and you might not even know it.
So if Captain Underpants is the Superman of this universe, then Dog Man is Batman, and both are powerful archetypes that help reveal a kid’s deepest motivations and desires. Sure, kids like stories with courage, strength, and a sense of justice, but they really like it when it is delivered in a silly, scatological way. For example, Dog Man needs to vomit up the antidote that he accidentally ate, but then lick it back up so he can use his slobber to help save the day. Gross, but good still triumphs over evil.
This sort of weird fun was on full display in theaters during the Dog Man movie this past February, and let me tell you, the fans, freaks, and fanatics were all out to support. My daughter had only been to a movie theater one other time to see Moana 2 back in November, but nothing could have prepared her for this type of festival atmosphere. Kids brought Dog Man stuffies and other forms of merchandise with them to accompany them to the theater (lots of Cat Kid). Some had their favorite copy of the Dog Man series with them (I guess to read while waiting for the movie to start or compare the movie to the source material). One was dressed like Captain Underpants (underwear over his pants). The scene was electric, like a literary Burning Man for kids.
The way these kids feel about the Dog Man movie is probably the way I felt when the first X-Men movie was released in 2000. They had invested so much love and care into the books and now here it was on the big screen. Their weird obsession with these characters had finally been validated, and that’s a great thing to see. Remember, these are book, not video game or Disney, characters that we are talking about, and I can’t tell you another series in the bookstore or their elementary school library that they might get even half excited about.
And the more I learn about the author Dav Pilkey, the more I like. His sole objective is to inspire kids and get them to read. Growing up with ADHD, Pilkey says school was a struggle and teachers didn’t know what to do with him. "They were a little frustrated so they would send me into the hallway a lot,” he told an interviewer on The Today Show. “I felt like an outsider in elementary school and didn’t have a lot of friends.” So Pilkey would draw comics and imagine these little stories coming to life on the page. And this is where Captain Underpants and Dog Man were born.
Pilkey is also dyslexic and credits his disability for his resiliency and success. He says when he began seeking a book publisher, he was able to cope with failure because of his childhood struggles. “Having the challenges of ADHD and dyslexia helped me a lot with dealing with rejection…I kind of grew up knowing what it was like to not quite fit in." Very inspiring, to say the least.
I was chatting with our children’s librarian about this phenomenon and she asked me if I knew that the Little Free Library that I mentioned above was donated by the creator, Dav Pilkey himself. Um, what? Apparently, Pilkey bought all of those red Little Frees and donated all 50,000 books that went into them as part of the Impact Library Program, which funds book exchanges in under-resourced communities. The copy of The Scarlet Shredder that my daughter got was to “help ignite her passion for reading.”
Mission accomplished, Mr. Pilkey.