Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part 1

Gynn picked this up for the Kiddo when she was in the USA recently.

Title: Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part 1: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets (Full Color Edition)
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2018
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey
Colorist: Jose Garibbaldi

This is the full-color edition of the sixth book in Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series. Like the rest of the series, it's a mix of comics and prose (plus the occasional Flip-o-Rama!).

Class nerd Melvin Sneedly vows revenge after George and Harold subject him to a series of pranks, including writing him into one of their comics making fun of his tattletale tendencies. He attempts to use his Combine-o-Tron machine to make himself into an invincible cyborg, but an ill-timed sneeze results in a revolting combination of boy, robot, and boogers.

I can't say I'm a big fan of gross-out humor, which is the main theme of this installment, although here it is decidedly gross-out humor of the over-the-top silly variety.

As usual, Pilkey manages great timing, and scatters in a few really brilliant jokes, but this installment was a tad too sticky and slimy to be a favorite of mine. The Kiddo certainly enjoyed it. It ends on a cliffhanger (as the "Part 1" in the title implies), so the snot-related jokes are only just getting started.

I will also point out that the color really enhances the artwork for this story, providing some perfect booger-green for the action scenes.

Rating: 5.5/10

Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman

The Kiddo picked this one out when we visited Barnes & Noble in Middletown RI during our visit to the USA on Christmas break.

Title: Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2017
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey

This is the full-color edition.

When George and Harold's pranks against a mean-spirited retiring teacher escalate to the point where they are both about to flunk the fourth grade, the boys turn to their hypnosis ring. Because that worked so well the first time. Unfortunately, a succession of mishaps results in Miss Ribble turning into exactly the supervillain George and Harold has imagined her as.

Earth's only hope is for Captain Underpants to overcome his one weakness: Spray starch.

This had some funny bits, but was somewhat uneven. I'm also not that big a fan of the hypnosis gimmick, even when totally played for laughs. The plot was about what one would expect, although the new Captain Underpants origin story in comic form that George and Harold create stood out as a pretty amusing bit.

This was entertaining, and my son (age 10) enjoyed it, but neither of us found as laugh-out-loud funny as the Dog Man books (or the earlier Captain Underpants books) have been, and I didn't think it had the heart of the Dog Man stories either.

Entertaining enough, but I have read better by Pilkey.

Rating: 6/10

Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

Another book from this series, brought home by the Kiddo from the school library.

Title: Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2000
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey

A brilliant scientist arrives in the USA from a country where everyone has a silly name. And unfortunately for Professor Pippy P. Poopypants (the middle initial stands for Peepee!), he is having a hard time getting anyone to take him seriously. Finally, down on his luck and desperate, he takes a job teaching science at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School in Piqua, Ohio, confident that children will be accepting and loving, in spite of his silly name.

That goes about as well as you would expect it to go. And the professor goes off the deep end, shrinks the school, supersizes his previously gerbil-sized mecha suit, and demands that everyone change their name to a silly one based on his three simple charts. Then, of course, it's up to Captain Underpants to save the day.

By the way, this is a guest review, written by Loopy Pizzahead, with input from his Kiddo, Gidget Pizzahead.

Really, the whole book is amusing, but the silly names charts had the Kiddo rolling with laughter. There is a nice mix of slapstick and satire here, with multiple layers of humor. The plot is pretty straightforward, and the story comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Excellent work from Dav Pilkey AKA Gidget Hamsterbrains.

Rating: 8/10

Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies From Outer Space (and the Subsequent Assault of the Equally Evil Lunchroom Zombie Nerds)

The Kiddo brought this one home from the school library.

Title: Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies From Outer Space (and the Subsequent Assault of the Equally Evil Lunchroom Zombie Nerds)
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 1999
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey

An alien invasion of the school cafeteria is turning the student body into zombie nerds. George and Harold try unsuccessfully to convince Principal Krupp to believe them, but when all else fails, it will be up to Principal Krupp's alter-ego, Captain Underpants, to save the day. But Captain Underpants is just a school Principal who's been hypnotized to believe he's a superhero. How can he possible stop an alien invasion?

With Incredibly Graphic Violence (in Flip-O-Rama!), that's how!

This is a fast-paced story with a lot of plot twists, along with Dav Pilkey's usual playing around with comic book cliches. It's got slapstick a-plenty for the younger readers, and a nice sprinkling of geeky references for the adults (Omni magazine gets namedropped!).

It also does a nice job of making a big change in the nature of the whole Captain Underpants series, introducing changes that will be of major consequence in the books that come after this one.

This felt like a nice leveling-up for this series.

Rating: 8/10

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets

The Kiddo brought this one home from the school library.

Title: Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 1999
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey

George and Harold are excited for the upcoming schoolwide Invention Convention, but mean Principal Krupp hasn't forgotten what happened the previous year, when George and Harold invented a powerful new glue, which they demonstrated by applying it to every seat in the auditorium.

This time around, George and Harold are stuck serving and invention convention detention, but that doesn't stop them from engaging in a bit of after-hours sabotage. But when they mess with the wrong invention, they suddenly find themselves in the midst of an invasion they the toilet villains from their own comic books!

And when Principal Krupp changes into Captain Underpants, the situation could be headed, well, down the toilet.

This was tighter plotted than either of the other two Captain Underpants books I've read, and that helped it a lot. The story kept its focus, told funny jokes, and featured a couple of entertaining Flip-o-Rama fight scenes.

The Kiddo laughed out loud in a number of places, and I appreciated the jokes too. Overall, this was an amusing installment in this series.

Rating: 7.5/10

Dog Man Unleashed

Bought this for the Kiddo at his school's book fair here in Shanghai.

Title: Dog Man Unleashed
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2017
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey
Editor: Anamika Bhatnagar

This is a Captain Underpants spinoff, presenting the comic book hero originally drawn by the main characters in the Captain Underpants comics.

Dog Man, a cop with a dog's head and a man's body (and maybe a fourth of the brains of each) battles crime, feline crime mostly, all while trying to celebrate the Chief's birthday and attempting to remember not to get the Chief a dead fish as a present.

This all leads to a saga involving multiple villains and the expected amount of mayhem.

Lots of goofy slapstick and dog puns, but props for including both Dr. Seuss and Charles Dickens references.

The Kiddo and I both got a lot of laughs out of this one.

Rating: 8/10

Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers

This was a gift to the Kiddo from his cousin when we were visiting family over the summer.

Title: Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2012
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey

The Kiddo and I read the first volume of this series and skipped directly to this one (the ninth), which was probably not the best way to approach this. This book relies fairly heavily on what has come earlier in the series to set things up.

Also, there is time travel involved. Complete with full-on time travel paradoxes that would make the X-Men universe proud. On top of that, this book serves as an origin-story for George and Harold.

And finally, the ending is pretty wild. That's all I'm going to say as far as that goes.

Unfortunately, the "origin" portion drags a bit, making the middle of this book something of a slog (to the extent that a middle-grade mixed-prose-and-sequential book can qualify as a slog).

More unfortunately, a major subplot involves some very sexist tropes in which the bullies are repeatedly humiliated with things that get the rest of the school to perceive them as feminine. I'd really like to be past this sort of thing, but here it is again.

The Kiddo did laugh at most of the jokes, and the time travel stuff got him thinking a bit, but there was enough negative here that I'm not particularly eager to check out #2-8.

Rating: 4/10

The Adventures of Captain Underpants

Last item that the Kiddo brought home from school.

Title: The Adventures of Captain Underpants
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 1997
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey

I'm reviewing this here because it has parts in sequential art form. This is another recent kids book that blurs the line between prose and graphic novel.

Two school pranksters get caught on tape pulling off a whole series of pranks the day of the big football game. These kids also happen to be the creators of a comic book called Captain Underpants, which they sell to their classmates.

When the principal uses the video tape to blackmail them into doing all of his chores for him, they resort to hypnosis (in the form of a mail-order hypnosis ring from a comic book advertisement) to get the incriminating video tape back.

But when they use hypnosis to convince the principal that he is Captain Underpants, he rushes off to fight crime and actually finds a real supervillain to do battle with. Can George and Harold save the day with only slingshots, skateboards, and fake dog-poop?

This was way funnier than I was expecting, mostly because the writer knows his way around comic cliches. I was expecting all toilet humor, but that is surprisingly kept to a minimum, and the story delivers some pretty decent nerdy humor instead.

This was a pleasant surprise.

Rating: 7.5/10