Although it can be upsetting when the 'e' on the name tag machine is broken, meaning that your name is spelt wrong for all the customers in Pizza Hut to see, the consolations may include shifting over 140 million books and selling the film and TV rights to your enormously popular characters. At least, that’s how it went for children’s author Dav Pilkey, starting with his first comic book series for kids in the early 1990s.
Pilkey was visiting Ireland as part of what Oliver Callan calls "this incredible world European tour," meeting fans of his work even as the film version of his Dog Man comic book series tops the Irish box office charts. His success has been a long time coming, though, as he told Oliver that he came up with his most popular creations at a very young age:
"That was the beginning of Dog Man and Captain Underpants when I was in Year 2. I was 8 years old when I started those."
"That" refers to the unfortunate habit Pilkey’s teachers had of putting him outside the classroom to avoid disruption brought on by what we now know is ADHD.
"A lot of the teachers just didn’t have the tools to deal with a kid like me and so they focused most of their energy in keeping me quiet and keeping the distraction out of the classroom."
While he was sitting there, he started drawing comics and later showing them to his friends. They were popular because they were funny and Dav’s school friends related to their teachers featuring as the villains in the stories. The teachers themselves, not so much:
"I don’t think they liked seeing themselves as the villains in my comic book, so when they would see a Godzilla-type with their head on it, they were not too happy about that."
There’s being unhappy and there’s being unhappy, though. A few of Dav’s teachers – he went to religious schools – actually decided that he might be possessed, and they needed to do something about it:
"This was in the 1980s, during what they called the Satanic Panic and a couple of my teachers thought I might be possessed and they performed an exorcism on me."
He was 12 at the time and absolutely terrified, as you might expect.
"For many years it resulted in some nightmares and just trouble sleeping, just really some anxiety issues, but for the most part, I talked my way out of it."
It also helped that he had a very protective home life, with both his parents supporting his artistic endeavours from an early age.
Dav’s big breakthrough came in 1997 with the publication of The Adventures of Captain Underpants. The book featured a school principal who gets hypnotised into believing he’s a superhero. This is how Dav explained it to Oliver:
"The plot of Captain Underpants revolves around two boys named George and Harold and they’re very much like I was when I was a kid. They’re just goofballs and they have ADHD like I did. And they’re always making comics and stories and getting in trouble. So, they end up hypnotising their principal and turning him into a superhero named Captain Underpants."
Wearing nothing but his tiny whiteys and a red cape, Captain Underpants faces nefarious villains like the Wicked Wedgie Woman and Professor Poopypants, but he somehow always manages to triumph. Twelve books, one movie, a Netflix series and multiple specials later, Captain Underpants has spawned a spin-off: Dog Man.
"When Captain Underpants ended, I wanted to keep this world alive and so George and Harold are continuing to make comics and Dog Man is one of the comics that they make and so we get to see George and Harold grow up into their high school years through these comics, as they mature as they come up with different themes and explore kindness and other virtues like that through their comics."
Dog Man is a hero with the head of a dog on the body of a man. Because of course he is. He comes from the mind of a primary school child, after all. The movie version of Dog Man is in cinemas now.
You can hear the full conversation between Oliver and Dav Pilkey by tapping or clicking above.
