Potty humor and senseless violence are two ideas common entrenched in what normative adult society considers ‘kid’s humor.’ It’s considered something to grow out of over time, and is by definition childish. Dav Pilkey’s wildly popular Dog Man graphic novel revolves around the titular character, who came to be when Officer Knight’s body and Greg the dog’s head were stitched together after an accident, solving various crimes, most of which are instigated by the villain Petey the Cat. Dog Man exemplifies this aspect of children’s culture, containing explosions and poop jokes throughout, and being filled with inappropriate language and “childish” grammar and spelling. However, below the surface it is a lot more than its crude overtones, and its popularity attests to how much smarter children are than we think.

            One point of controversy that surrounds Dog Man is its extremely simple language. As explained before the first chapter, it is a comic that is “written” by George and Harold, two fourth graders who are the main characters of Dav Pilkey’s other comic series Captain Underpants (a point that will be returned to later) and as such the art, and more importantly the writing, is constructed at a fourth grade level. Within the book random words and letters are capitalized, the grammar is crass, and there are even words that are misspelled, crossed out and then rewritten as if nothing happened. Critics of the series denote that this type of language can be a bad influence on children’s own writing. On Common Sense Media, a website where parents and children can leave rates and reviews for the books they read, one parent with the online handle of freeinfaith99 said that Dog Man inspired their child to begin writing “cuz” instead of “because” (VSPI Library). This simplified grammar is pervasive throughout the comic, and it is often paired with a caricatured portrayal of adults.

            The other element of Dog Man which is under scrutiny, besides the self-explanatory potty humor, is its portrayal of adults, specifically in their interactions with children or characters of an ambiguous age. There are many examples of rude language where an older or more powerful character gets talked back to, resulting in anger and a punch-line. In one instance, Petey is explaining to his assistant his plan to destroy Dog Man by trapping him in a giant vacuum cleaner, and the assistant is curious as to why Petey doesn’t use firecrackers. Petey gets upset after the assistant says “Gee, I think firecrackers would have been easier” and retorts with “Who asked you?” to which the assistant says “Um… you did” (Pilkey 28) and sports a smile while Petey slaps himself on the head. This type of language is a common way that kids verbally fight parents, teachers or other sources of authority, and is something adults would rather kids not learn from their reading material. The trend of adult-like characters being the butt of jokes persists into the meta-space of George and Harold’s tendency to draw Dog Man in school, both on pages 114 and 115, where they attach a fully typed angry note that was went to the boys’ moms, and on page 224 where Harold’s “Refocus Form,” a punishment for drawing comics, is included. Adults are ridiculed in both Dog Man’s and George and Harold’s world, and it’s critical to the book’s message that both are there.

            As mentioned earlier, George and Harold are the children who are “writing” the Dog Man comics, and they serve as an important barrier between the reader and the comic in order to impart good lessons. Dog Man is full of potty humor, rude or childish language and badly depicted adults, but these things aren’t simple aspects of a disrespectful comic, but a peephole into how these characters, how their intended readers and how the author sees the world. Dav Pilkey’s inspiration for George and Harold is himself, and his experience growing up with ADHD and dyslexia. At a meet and greet in Santa Monica High School, he said to a crowd of fans “Harold and George are my alter egos. When I was a kid, you never knew what side would come out” (Butwell). Pilkey faced a lot of struggles as a child, and writes satirically about those struggles in Dog Man. The children who read his work think potty humor is funny, they speak like Dog Man and Petey and they write like George and Harold, and have all faced their fair share of adults who don’t listen to or understand them. Pilkey does not expect us to take the book at face value, but to read it through George and Harold’s eyes, and when we analyze it through this lens, it radically transforms.

            There are many simple and obscene jokes in Dog Man, but there are also a lot of subtler ones that one wouldn’t immediately expect from a comic that is ostensibly “by children, for children.” First, Petey’s plan to blow up Knight and Greg with a bomb that results in Dog Man’s awakening revolves around Greg being the brains of the duo and choosing the wrong wire to cut because, as Knight puts it, “Dogs are colored blind” (Pilkey 20). This not only requires knowledge of the bomb wire cutting trope, but also the knowledge that dogs are colorblind. Then some jokes are purely visual, like the long-bodied wiener dog taking up two panels on page 214 and the ‘How 2 Draw Invisible Petey’ instructions on page 234. There are also many references to modern culture, such as the man at the electronics store who says “Duh, this apple tastes funny” (Pilkey 125) while eating a computer, a hint to the company Apple, and the cheesesteak company mascot Philly, referring to Philly cheesesteaks, a local delicacy, on page 190. Other forms of children’s media, for instance Disney movies, have audiences other than children, and also include hidden jokes, but for the purpose of only being understood by older audiences, a reward for putting up with everything else. Dog Man has no such mass appeal, and the sheer amount of deeper humor stretches far beyond what would be required for parents reading bedtime stories. Therefore the comic expects its younger audience to read between the lines, a task which can be done not only for its humor but also its plot.

            Of the four main chapters in Dog Man, three of them have themes that, while layered with violence and potty humor, instill good morals or provide complex plots past the classic “good guy wins, bad guy loses” narrative. In chapter two, the mayor, a traditional authority, figure, is the main villain. In chapter three, the plot of the story is that Petey discovers that reading is what makes Dog Man so smart (in the panel where he finds this out, Dog Man is lying on top of his doghouse like Snoopy), and plots to destroy all books in the world. Petey literally states “So, reading makes you smart, eh?” (Pilkey 119). Finally, in chapter four, the anthropomorphic hot dog which serves as the villain becomes evil because Petey uses it to escape from jail, showing the importance of being kind. These plots, along with the deep humor of the book, show how Dav Pilkey writes comics that are more than just childish jokes, and by extension how children like George, Harold and the reader can write entertaining stories about the things that they find funny, even if adults don’t give them the respect they deserve.

            Below the surface, Dog Man is a lot more than its crude overtones, and its popularity attests to how much smarter children are than we think. Canonically, Dog Man is a story written not by Dav Pilkey, but by two fourth graders. They write about topics that are relatable to them, which involve both crude humor and anti-adult sentiment, much to the dismay of the adults around them. Literally, Dog Man is a story about two kids dealing with the struggles of growing up, fighting against the system through their art and writing. They tell deep jokes, make subtle visual gags and references, and write plots that challenge the traditional stories they’ve read. George and Harold have written the children’s book that they wanted to read, and in that sense Dav Pilkey has written that for us.