BOOK REVIEW: Dog Man: Fetch-22

written by David Steffen

Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls is a 2019 graphic novel for kids, the eighth in the Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey (creator of Captain Underpants). The series so far has been reviewed here.

The villain Petey the cat is trying to turn over a new life and be a force for good instead of a force for evil, mostly motivated by a desire to live up to the confidence of his son, an immature clone of himself, known as Lil’ Petey. Lil’ Petey is a good-hearted scamp who is now in shared custody between Petey and Petey’s nemesis Dog-Man who is half-dog half-cop (Lil’ Petey and Dog Man are also members of a superhero group the Supa Buddies with the third member being the robot 80HD). But Lil’ Petey’s faith in humanity has been shaken.

The Fair Fairy is a long-running children’s TV show where a fairy explains to children how to be fair. But, it turns out that she’s not so good at keeping her temper when dealing with kids when she flips out (again!) on live TV and stomps off to become the newest villain. This combined with a minor mishap with some “supa brain dots” that turn a pond full of tadpoles into flying telekinetic monsters that team up with the Fair Fairy to wreak havoc on the city, and Dog-Man and his friends again have their work cut out for them!

Still very enjoyable series for grade-school age kids.

BOOK REVIEW: Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls

written by David Steffen

Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls is a 2019 graphic novel for kids, the seventh in the Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey (creator of Captain Underpants). The series so far has been reviewed here.

Our hero Dog Man (half dog, half policeman) is a hero and a very good boy, but sometimes he has a reputation for being… easily distracted. It’s hard to depend on a hero who chases anything that resembles a ball even when he’s in the middle of a chase. He asks his friends, Lil’ Petey and 80HD, for help getting over this obsession and they are so effective at it that his loving obsession turns into a phobia, which the city’s villains notice as a weakness they can exploit.

Meanwhile, the once-villain who has started to turn a new leaf decides to start a new life with his immature clone Lil’ Petey, whom he had originally created to help with his evil schemes but found that the young clone was so good-natured and loving and considered him a father. At first Petey had resisted the insistence of Lil’ Petey that he could be good, but he started to see that point of view. But now as he is ready to settle into a simpler life, Petey’s own father, a crook who instilled Petey’s criminal tendencies in him at a young age, has come to town.

More fun from the Dog Man and gang, if you liked the earlier books odds are you’ll like this one too!

BOOK REVIEW: Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey

written by David Steffen

Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild is a 2018 graphic novel for kids, the sixth in the Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey (creator of Captain Underpants). The series so far has been reviewed here.

Our hero Dog Man (half dog half policeman) is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, robbing a bank, and he is confined to jail where he is ridiculed as a misfit. His friends work to free him from confinement while Dog Man tries to reconcile with his dual nature as being both man and dog but not entirely in either world. Meanwhile, Dog Man’s friend Lil’ Petey continues to insist to his “papa” (from whom he was cloned) is not irredeemably a villain, and the Fleas from the last book return to wreak havoc once again.

Another fun romp in this kid’s book adventure!

MOVIE REVIEW: Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

written by David Steffen

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is a computer animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation that was released in June 2017 in the US, based on the long-running book children’s book humor superhero series.

George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch) are the 4th-grade comic book authors who created Captain Underpants, who is pretty much Superman except all of his powers are toilet-related and instead of wearing a cape and underwear on top of his clothes, he wears a cape and underwear on top of nothing.   They’re known for being the class clowns, always pulling pranks on the teachers, and the principal Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) is always looking for a way to bring them down a notch.  Mr. Krupp decides to pull the ultimate power move and split them into separate fourth grade class with the intention of destroying their friendship.  Desperate, the boys sneak into his office to try to prevent this, and when they’re caught in the act George uses a toy hypno-ring which (surprising them both), actually hypnotizes Mr. Krupp.  They plant a suggestion that Mr. Krupp is actually Captain Underpants.  They discover that whenever he is touched by water he becomes Mr. Krupp, and whenever he hears a finger snap he turns into Captain Underpants, and so to keep their friendship intact they keep him as Captain Underpants pretending to be Mr. Krupp.

But Captain Underpants keeps trying to cause problems, always tending to lose his pants, and trying to rush off into danger, and his happy demeanor is so different from the grumpy Mr. Krupp.  Before the boys can stop him, he hires mad scientist Professor P (Nick Kroll) to the faculty, who soon makes his evil intentions clear.

Keeping in mind that I am in my mid-thirties and thus quite a ways away from the target demographic, I thought this movie was pretty fun, and I’m sure it’s a hit with the kids with all the poop and underwear.  I’m not at all familiar with the source material, but we picked it up as a rental to watch with a four year old, and he loved it.

So keeping all that in mind, I found the protagonists honestly pretty terrible, terrorizing the teachers and then acting surprised when the principal wants to do something about it.  When they realize that they’ve hypnotized the teacher I can understand them being excited at succeeding at stalling the principal’s plan, and at the immediate sense of control, but they apparently have no remorse over completely stealing this man’s life and replacing his mind with a comic book character, only getting upset at Captain Underpants’s behavior when they are afraid of being caught in the act.  And the entire crisis was based on the premise that splitting them into two different fourth-grade classrooms would destroy their friendship.  But their biggest point of bonding was making comics, which they did in their treehouse after school.  I don’t think that every kid’s movie has to have an overexplained moralistic story, but I do think that the themes and ethics involved in the story should be considered, because kids pick that stuff up.  So I guess I’ll file this one with Trolls under “problematic themes that no one else seems that worried about”.