Plot Summary
The story begins with the school troublemakers, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, making a comic featuring a superhero they made-up, The Amazing Captain Underpants. The book moves on to George and Harold playing a series of practical jokes on the school's football game automatically without being exposed (sprinkling pepper in the cheerleaders' pom-poms causing them to sneeze, pouring bubble bath liquid in the marching band's instruments causing the liquid to turn into foam, filling up the game's ball with helium causing it go up in the sky, replacing the players' ointment with itching cream causing the players to scratch and roll around, etc.) causing the game to be canceled. Their principal, Mr. Krupp, had successfully recorded a video of George and Harold preparing their pranks (by hiding a series of cameras) and going to show the football team the video, due to their curiosity about who was responsible for the fiasco from the game. This made George and Harold guilty and horrified. They begged for mercy, and Mr. Krupp gave them set of rules (black mail) and threatened to show the video to the football team if they do not obey the rules.
To avoid Mr. Krupp's tasks, George buys a 3-D Hypno-Ring (which they receive after 4–6 weeks of back-breaking labor) from the Li'l Wiseguy Company in Walla-Walla, Washington, so they can get Mr. Krupp to hand over the incriminating video. Harold replaces it with one of his little sister Heidi's "Boomer the Purple Dragon Singalong Videos". They then begin fooling around, telling Mr. Krupp he is a monkey or chicken. George hypnotizes Mr. Krupp to act as if he were Captain Underpants, who is the hero of their homemade comic books. To their distress, Mr. Krupp, as Captain Underpants, takes the role seriously and departs to fight crime.
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 laugh very hard and are apprehended by the police. The police begin to arrest Captain Underpants too, but George and Harold whisk him to safety on their skateboards. Then the three witness two robots stealing a large crystal. Captain Underpants tries to stop them, but his cape gets caught on their van. Captain Underpants, with George and Harold clinging to him by the heels, is dragged to an old, abandoned warehouse.
There they meet the evil Dr. Diaper (or Dr. Nappy in the British version), who plans to use the crystal as the transformer for his Laser-Matic 2000 to blow up the Moon, destroying every major city on Earth, so that he can take over the planet (although this wouldn't work. As the Moon is less than half the size of the Earth). George and Harold escape and hide, but Captain Underpants is captured and tied up.
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". When he departs to change his diaper, George and Harold incapacitate the robots and untie Captain Underpants. Harold pulls the self-destruct lever on the Laser-Matic 2000.
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 (which resembles a pacifier) at George, Harold, and Captain Underpants. Captain Underpants shoots a pair of underwear (his own underwear) at Dr. Diaper. The underwear covers Dr. Diaper's face, which renders him incapable of defending himself. After the warehouse explodes, Dr. Diaper is tied (with the same rope used to tie Captain Underpants up earlier) to a lamppost outside the police station with a note reading "Arrest Me!" taped to him.
George, Harold, and Captain Underpants return to Mr. Krupp's office and dress him back up as 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. In desperation, 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. After this, George finds the 3D Hypno Ring's manual, and throws it away, no longer believing they need it (unknown to them, the manual warns that pouring water over a person will cause them to switch between reality and trance whenever they hear someone snap their fingers or get water on their head). As it turns out, the football team enjoys the Sing-A-Long video so much that they change their name from the Knuckleheads to the Purple Dragon Sing-A-Long Friends. From this point on, whenever anyone snaps their fingers, Mr. Krupp transforms into Captain Underpants.
Read more about this topic: The Adventures Of Captain Underpants
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)