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The Adventures of Captain Underpants is a children's book by David Pilkey. It is the first novel in the Captain Underpants series.

Description[]

Fourth graders George Beard and Harold Hutchins are a couple of class clowns. The only thing they enjoy more than playing practical jokes is creating their own comic books. And together they've created the greatest superhero in the history of their elementary school: Captain Underpants! His true identity is SO secret, even HE doesn't know who he is! FEATURING FLIP-O-RAMA! The world-class cheesy animation style that lets YOU control the action! HAVE YOU READ YOUR UNDERPANTS TODAY?

Plot[]

Fourth-graders George Beard and Harold Hutchins aren't bad boys, but they do like pulling pranks! They also enjoy hanging out in their tree house, creating a comic strip about a superhero in underwear.

Summary[]

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Chapter 1: George and Harold[]

The story begins with the school troublemakers, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, two boys who are known by almost every one of their teachers as disruptive and rude. George and Harold love to play pranks on the helpless kids and teachers at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School. However, the narrator tells the readers to not get the wrong idea of the two. Despite what their teachers say, they are actually very nice boys. No matter what anybody says, they were good, sweet, And loveable. But the narrator switches to say that they aren't really loveable and sweet but are still good. It's just that both of them each had a "Silly Streak", And it was usually hard to control. However, that Silly Streak got them in BIG trouble one time. But before we will read that story, we should read this story.

TheTwoBoys

Chapter 2: Treehouse Comix Inc.[]

After quite a day of them in School cracking jokes and pranks, They go to their Treehouse, Called Treehouse Comix Inc. They are known schoolwide for the comic book series that they create and sell on the playground, known as "The Adventures of Captain Underpants", their favorite superhero. George got the Idea of Captain Underpants when he said that Superheroes look like they're flying on their underwear when flying.

Chapter 3: The Really Cool Adventures of Captain Underpants[]

The comic in the book starts with the Earth in a time of darkness and despair. Bad guys have taken over the world, while all the superheroes (including Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman) in the world are too old to fight them. Captain Underpants suddenly appears as a new extra-strength superhero, and the introduction comes in explaining that he is "faster than a speeding waistband", "more powerful than boxer shorts", and is "able to leap tall buildings without getting a wedgie". Night and day, he fights for truth, justice "and all that is pre-shrunk and cottony". Meanwhile, at a nearby school, the cafeteria gives the children the "Stinky Taco Surprise" since it is "Stinky Taco Surprise Day" at the timing. The children throw it all away since they hate it so much. The wasted food then comes to life as the Inedible Hunk (a parody of The Incredible Hulk), who then causes chaos to the school (eating 15 folding chairs and the gym teacher in the process). Captain Underpants then appears thanks to the kids calling for him. He then rapidly shoots underwear at the monster, but it doesn't work since the monster keeps eating them. So, the Captain ends up running around everywhere with the Hunk chasing him until eventually the Hunk becomes too tired and thirsty to continue the chasing, so Captain Underpants tricks him into going into the bathroom so he can get a drink of water there. The monster is fooled by this and drinks out of one of the toilets. Captain Underpants then flushes the Inedible Hunk down to the sewers. Captain Underpants then flies off as the principal and the kids are waving goodbye as the comic ends. On the back of the comic, there is a notice reading, "Don't miss our next adventure: Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets. Coming soon to a playground near you."

Chapter 4: Mean Old Mr. Krupp[]

They have many enemies (all of them being the faculty teachers). But the one who despises them most is the school principal, Mr. Krupp. Mr. Krupp hates them, their pranks, and especially the Captain Underpants comics. He watches the Two Boys selling their comics. The Narrator Describes Mr. Krupp the meanest, sourest old Principal in the whole history of Jerome Horwitz Elementary School. He hated laughter and singing, in fact, he hated all children together. He vows to get them one day ("one day very, very soon" he claims).

Chapter 5: One Day, Very, Very Soon[]

One day, the school's football team, the Jerome Horwitz Knuckleheads, is having their biggest game of the year against the Stubinville Stinkbugs. Before the game even starts, the football players, cheerleaders, and band players already experience countless problems with their equipment. Apparently, someone sabotaged the whole game. The first wave of Pranks was that somebody had sprinkled the Cheerleader's pom-poms with Black Pepper. The Second Prank that Somebody had poured bubble bath into The Marching Band's instrumentals, alongside filling the game ball with helium. The third strike was that Somebody had replaced The Deep-Heating Muscle Rub Lotion for the Jerome Hortwiz Knuckleheads with Mr. Prankster's Extra-Scratchy Itching Cream. After many more pranks, the game had to be called off. As the players walk away, we see George and Harold crouching beneath the bleachers, laughing. Of course, they were the ones who did it all. They believe they won't get in trouble for it since they assume there is no proof the teachers can claim to prove they did it.

Chapter 6: Busted[]

The next day, George and Harold hear an announcement over the school's intercom. They are wanted in Mr. Krupp's office. Harold is worried this could mean they are busted, but George says they don't can't proof anything due to the lack of evidence. Once inside, George and Harold notice a big red flag: Mr. Krupp was Smiling. And as long George and Harold knew Krupp, he never smiled. Mr. Krupp knew something. Mr. Krupp tells them he hadn't seen them at the Big Game yesterday, George tried to excuse it by saying they weren't feeling Very Well. And Harold tries to back it up. Mr. Krupp says that they missed a good game, and George and Harold tried their hardest not to feel any more guilt. He shows the two boys a tape and says that he set up video cameras all over the school and had caught every single one of George and Harold's pranks on tape. After the tape is over, everyone is silent for a while.

Chapter 7: A Little Blackmail[]

Then, George gets the courage to speak up and asks what Mr. Krupp is going to do with the video. Mr. Krupp says that He wasn't sure, one of his ideas that he should show it to the school board or George and Harold's parents, but he ultimately decides to show it to the football team so they can see who ruined their big game. George and Harold beg and plead Mr. Krupp to spare them as the football team will kill them for the rest of their lives if they do find out the truth. Mr. Krupp decides not to show the video, as long as George and Harold promise to follow his conditions. Mr. Krupp takes out a stack of paper with countless chores and behavior rules for George and Harold to follow. He also mentions they MUST follow the list exactly; otherwise, he will show the video to the football team.

Chapter 8: Crime and Punishment[]

The next day, George and Harold spend their entire day doing chores for Mr. Krupp, behaving nicely, and completing stacks of extra homework, dragging themselves to work in six o' clock in the morning. Even the teacher, Ms. Ribble is confused about this. Especially because all the other kids create mayhem, which George and Harold are usually responsible to start the mayhem. After taking in the homework, George states he has an idea that can could get them out of this situation. George reveals that he had bought a 3-D Hypno-Ring which they could use to make Mr. Krupp hand them the video and forget that this whole mess ever happened.

Chapter 9: Four-to-Six Weeks Later[]

After 4-6 weeks of back-breaking labor, George and Harold finally get the ring via the mail. Both of them are excited, and George warns Harold to not look at it closely because the Effects of the Ring would work on him and get him Hypnotized.

Chapter 10: The 3-D Hypno Ring[]

After purposely making themselves late for chores and school, Mr. Krupp gets them into his office and demands where they were this morning. George and Harold state they were going to show the new ring they got. George then uses the 3-D Hypno Ring to hypnotize Mr. Krupp into handing over the incriminating video. Harold replaces it with one of his little sister Heidi's Boomer the Purple Dragon sing along videos.

Chapter 11: Fun with Hypnosis[]

As they look in the cabinet on what Mr. Krupp had confiscated from the boys and other people over the years, they discover some good stuff including the Captain Underpants comics they wrote from the previous years. They began to reminisce the comic books by reading. Hours later, they realized it was getting close to lunch time as they were preparing to leave that noticed Mr. Krupp still in a trance, so they decided to wait and play around. They then begin fooling around with the ring hypnotizing Mr. Krupp thinking he is a chicken then later a monkey. And then lastly, they get an idea after looking at the comic and George hypnotizes Mr. Krupp to act as if he were the Amazing Captain Underpants. Mr. Krupp began removing his toupee and clothing and takes of the curtain tying it to his neck and he is seen dressed like Captain Underpants yelling the battle cry "Tra La Laaa!". George and Harold look at him and began laughing hard to their distress. As they stopped laughing to take one more look at him, they saw he was gone.

Chapter 12: Out the Window[]

They then heard him outside doing the battle cry again and as they look out the window, they saw Mr. Krupp dressed as Captain Underpants running outside into the city of Piqua. Mr. Krupp, as Captain Underpants, takes the role seriously and departs to fight crime. George and Harold were shocked knowing that they didn't give a command to Mr. Krupp to fight crime. George knows that he could get killed and get into BIG trouble if they didn't stop him, so they took their skateboards and a few items out the cabinet to help save the principal.

Chapter 13: Bank Robbers[]

George and Harold flee the school searching all over the city to where Captain Underpants might have gone off too. They later find him at a bank. Captain Underpants confronts two bank robbers, and orders them to "Surrender! Or I will have to resort to Wedgie Power!" The bank robbers fall down in hysterics and are apprehended by the police. The sheriff isn't amused by Captain Underpants acting heroically so he gave a command, and the police officers begin to arrest Captain Underpants too, but George and Harold whisk him to safety on their skateboards.

Chapter 14: The Big Bang[]

Suddenly, the crystal shop next door explodes, as two robots walk out of it, carrying a very large crystal. Captain Underpants tries to stop them, but his cape gets caught on their van. George and Harold grab onto Captain Underpants' feet, as he is dragged to an old, abandoned warehouse. The Little Boy and his Mom are at the bench waiting for the bus as the boy sees them passing by, but the boy's mother didn't believe him.

Chapter 15: Dr. Diaper[]

Captain Underpants then crashes through the door of the warehouse while George and Harold slam into the back of the van. There they discover the evil Dr. Diaper, a mad scientist resembling a baby. As Captain Underpants was in plain view to Dr. Diaper, the robots capture and tie him up. When the coast became clear, George and Harold peak into the hole in the door (Captain Underpants created this when he crashed into it) to see what is going on. The witness Captain Underpants tied up in a chair with the robots beside him. The villain explains that he plans to use the crystal as part of his Lasermatic 2000 to blow up the Moon, destroying every major city on earth, so that he can take over the planet.

George uses a slingshot to toss fake doggy doo-doo between Dr. Diaper's feet. Dr. Diaper is terribly embarrassed, thinking that he has had an "accident".

Chapter 16: The Extremely Graphic Violence Chapter (in Flip-O-Rama™)[]

When he departs to change his diaper, George and Harold incapacitate the robots and untie Captain Underpants.

Chapter 17: The Escape[]

They pull the self-destruct lever on the Laser-Matic 2000 thinking that will turn it off.

Dr. Diaper, enraged at the destruction of the Laser-Matic 2000, his robots, and the foiling of his plan to take over the world, aims his Diaper-Matic 2000 ray gun at George, Harold, and Captain Underpants.

Captain Underpants shoots a pair of underwear at Dr. Diaper. The underwear covers Dr. Diaper's face, which renders him incapable of defending himself. Before the building exploded, the boys ask the captain, "Where did you get that extra pair of underwear?" and the reply was, "What extra pair?" while Captain Underpants wore a barrel over himself (stating that Captain Underpants used the underwear he wore against Dr. Diaper, thus meaning he's completely, uhhh..uhh.mmm...well let's just say, exposed).

Chapter 18: To Make a Long Story Short[]

After the warehouse explodes and George, Harold, and Captain Underpants escape, they send Dr. Diaper to the police station and tie him to a nearby pole, so that he can't escape, and the police can arrest him.

Chapter 19: Back to School[]

George, Harold, and Captain Underpants return to Mr. Krupp's office. They give Captain Underpants Mr. Krupp's clothes along with an extra pair of underpants to dress up like Mr. Krupp, so that nobody in the school would recognize him. Captain Underpants then gives them the meanest look to them like the boys asked him to do to look like Mr. Krupp. The boys try to figure out how to return Mr. Krupp to his normal self, but they've lost the instruction manual for the 3-D Hypno-Ring. They try several times to hypnotize Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp, but the methods do not work. As a last resort, George tries dumping water on Mr. Krupp's head. It works, and Mr. Krupp returns to his angry self, resolving to give the video to the football team after all though George and Harold are surprisingly very happy to see Mr. Krupp again. George finds the instruction manual to the 3-D Hypno-Ring in his shirt pocket, but he and Harold throw it away as they believe they do not need it anymore.

Chapter 20: The End?[]

As it turns out, the team enjoyed the Sing-A-Long video so much that they change their name from the Knuckleheads to the Purple Dragon Sing-A-Long Friends, although the change doesn't go very well with the fans.

George and Harold go back to their goofy ways with nothing that is threatening to their lives. Unfortunately, from this point on, whenever anyone snaps their fingers, Mr. Krupp transforms into Captain Underpants. Ms. Ribble is then shown snapping her fingers after George and Harold disrupt the class with their jokes, Mr. Krupp who was passing by with a cup of coffee unfortunately hears the sound of fingers snapping and drops his cup of coffee being in a trance, becomes Captain Underpants again and runs out of the school to fight crime. Harold and George hear his battle cry, and both look outside to see that Captain Underpants has return once again. Much to their surprise, both respond to this with "Oh No!" and "Here we go again!" respectively as they thought it was over with Captain Underpants, it wasn't. The adventure was only just beginning.

After Mr. Krupp is "watered", the ring instructions are found in George's shirt pocket. After being thrown away, you can read on the back of the instruction manual, "WARNING!" "Whatever you do, don't pour water on anybody's head when they are in a trance! This will cause the hypnotized person to slip back and forth from trance to reality whenever they hear they hear the sound of fingers snapping." Despite this, the boys were able to de-hypnotize their teacher "Ms. Ribble" through the ring with no problems, although considering how they were panicking, they may not have thought of trying to use the method used in the fifth book.

Comics[]

Characters[]

Trivia/Goofs[]

  • Early printings of the book have " An Epic Novel by Dav Pilkey" instead of The First Epic Novel by Dav Pilkey" and the "Little Apple" logo on the cover, In a 2013 printing by the Blue Sky Press, It reads "An Epic Novel" on the jacket and the binding inside, But on the title page, It says "The First Epic Novel"
  • Ms. Ribble and Mr. Meaner aren't referred to by their names in this book. They received their names in Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets.
  • This is the only book in the series that Melvin Sneedly isn't featured in.
  • The comic in the book has the same name as this book's title, but Dr. Diaper and his robots weren't seen.
  • "The Inedible Hunk" is a parody of The Incredible Hulk.
  • "Dr. Diaper" is a parody of Doctor Doom.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic is mentioned in this book when Mr. Krupp says the kids played "Weird Al" songs full blast for six entire hours on the intercom. Funnily enough, "Weird Al" performs the theme song for Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.
  • "Boomer The Purple Dragon" is a parody of Barney the Dinosaur.
  • In the North American version, the villain is called Dr. Diaper, but in the European English version, he is called "Dr. Nappy" ("Nappy" is the European term for Diaper).
    • Though in the “The Pants you can Wear Outside Your Trousers” version of this book, on page 74, paragraph 2 instead of being Dr. Nappy, it is Dr. Diaper.
  • The 1991 sci-fi novel Fallen Angels is referenced surrounding the 3D hypno-ring advertisement.
  • This is the only book where there is no recap comic at the beginning of the book before the first chapter begins. This is because this is the first book of the series.
  • In the comic book, Captain Underpants didn't have his cape on, while he was throwing underpants at the Inedible Hunk.
  • Another version of this book, the Full Color version, was released in August 2013. As the title states, the illustrations within the book are printed in full color, instead of being black and white.
  • On the "about the author" page, it said "When David Pilkey was in school, he was always getting into 'touble' for pulling pranks, cracking jokes, and making silly comic books." The "r" was missing on "trouble".
  • David started working on this book in 1996.
  • Chapter 8's title, "Crime and Punishment" has been referenced by the ninth Dog Man book.

External links[]

Gallery[]

Main Books in Main Series
Captain Underpants
The Adventures of Captain UnderpantsCaptain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking ToiletsCaptain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space (and the Subsequent Assault of the Equally Evil Lunchroom Zombie Nerds)Captain Underpants And The Perilous Plot of Professor PoopypantsCaptain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman • Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy ( Part 1) ( Part 2) • Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty PeopleCaptain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy TinkletrousersCaptain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-BoxersCaptain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot
Super Diaper Baby
The Adventures of Super Diaper BabySuper Diaper Baby 2: Invasion of the Potty SnatchersSuper Diaper Baby 3: Petey’s Revenge
Ook and Gluk
The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen From the FutureThe Adventures of Ook and Gluk Jr.: Kung-Fu Cavekids in Outer Space
Dog Man
Dog ManDog Man: UnleashedDog Man: A Tale of Two KittiesDog Man and Cat KidDog Man: Lord of the FLEASDog Man: Brawl of the WildDog Man: For Whom the Ball RollsDog Man: Fetch-22Dog Man: Grime and PunishmentDog Man: Mothering HeightsDog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea
Cat Kid Comic Club
Cat Kid Comic ClubCat Kid Comic Club: PerspectivesCat Kid Comic Club: On PurposeCat Kid Comic Club: CollaborationsCat Kid Comic Club: Influencers
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