A tail as old as time: Which are better, dogs or cats?

In the fictional world of Dog Man, the graphic novel series about a half-man, half-dog hybrid who works as a police officer, we are introduced to both the eponymous hero of the tale, a non-speaking semi-canine, and his arch-enemy, the “world’s most evilest cat”, Petey.

Sitting down with author Dav Pilkey to unpack the great mysteries of life, his literary works, vast global fandom and the new film adaptation of Dog Man, it’s difficult to go past one of the great existential questions in the anthropomorphic animal world: dogs or cats?

“I don’t know if it’s possible to be straight down the middle,” Pilkey explains, in defiance of centuries of human evolution, which has left us with a cultural divide that makes a discussion of 21st-century global politics look like the easy way out.

“For me, it’s more about the particular dog or cat, whether or not I have a connection with it,” Pilkey says. You should be a diplomat, I tell him, adding that I am Team Dog, and I have no shame. “Like yourself, I kind of grew up in a dog house, but my wife loves cats. So I grew to really appreciate cats, and it’s become a new part of me.

Pilkey’s characters in the first book, Captain Underpants.

“The journey of Petey is actually a journey that is really close to my heart because he started out feeling like a villain and a bad guy, and that’s kind of how it was for me too,” he says. “I grew up with ADHD and dyslexia; I was always getting sent out in the hallway, always being told I was a bad kid.”

That stuff “sticks with you”, Pilkey says. “I grew up thinking that I was bad, and I’ve been on a personal journey myself to become a better person, I think as we all are. And so I think Petey was a good way for me to exorcise some of those challenges.”

It was in that school hallway where he refocused punishment into something more positive and began work on the character of Captain Underpants, the bestselling book that launched his literary career in 1997. More books, including Captain Underpants sequels such as The Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers and The Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers, followed. Now, with legions of fans worldwide, Pilkey is something of a junior literary icon.

Pilkey drawing his Captain Underpants characters.

Then Dog Man, introduced as a comic-book character created by kindergarteners George Beard and Harold Hutchins in the Captain Underpants books, spun off into its own series. Like Captain Underpants, which sold 90 million books worldwide, it has enjoyed astonishing success, with more than 60 million copies sold.

A film seemed almost inevitable, and DreamWorks Animation has made Dog Man real. The film stars Pete Davidson as Petey, Isla Fisher as reporter Sarah Hatoff, Billy Boyd as cameraman Seamus, and Ricky Gervais as Flippy the Fish. Dog Man does not speak, but director Peter Hastings provides his barks and other expressions.

A scene from Dog Man: The Musical which will play at the Sydney Opera House later this month.Credit: Peter Wallis

For Pilkey, whose life seems more comfortably focused on either writing, the outdoors (hiking and canoeing) or meeting with the armies of children who clamour for his books, walking into a Hollywood recording studio to meet the cast little surreal. “I feel really lucky because nearly all the voice actors that I’ve been lucky enough to work with are creators themselves, and they come up with their own material, and a lot of them do stand-up, and they’re just constantly writing,” he says. “I think they put a lot of that into their portrayals of the characters, and I think that just makes it a richer experience.”

Coming hot behind it is Dog Man: The Musical, a stage adaptation playing at the Sydney Opera House this month and Arts Centre Melbourne from September 30. “Overwhelming joy is my takeaway from it all,” Pilkey says, of the multi-platform expansion of Dog Man. “I try to stay out of any adaptation ... I try to work with people that I trust, and usually based on the work that they’ve done before they took on my project. I wouldn’t want anybody staring down and looking over my shoulder when I was creating.”

As a kid, Pilkey says curiosity brought him to books. “They just happened to be laying around the house, and so I loved looking at the pictures and I would like to just explore the books on my own,” he says. “As I got older, my mum started to take me to the library, and she always let me pick out whatever books I wanted, and so I’d always find books that had great illustrations and wonderful stories, and that kind of helped to develop my love of reading,” he says.

TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO DAV PILKEY

1. Worst habit? Worrying.
2. Greatest fear? Not enough time.
3. The line that stayed with you? “How can I turn this into something good?”
4. Biggest regret? Worrying too much.
5. Favourite book? Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
6. The artwork or song you wish was yours? The Great Pumpkin Waltz, by Vince Guaraldi (from the soundtrack to the 1966 Peanuts Halloween special It’s The Great pumpkin, Charlie Brown).
7. If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? The year 2100.

In the creation of Dog Man, Pilkey made a conscious choice to make him a non-verbal character. In the story, he is created after a medical accident that fused an injured police officer with his pet dog. The advantage, Pilkey says, is that Dog Man can explore and express in ways that words, perhaps, cannot express perfectly.

“I know that children tend to really love dogs,” Pilkey says. “Even if you’re watching a child, and a dog happens to walk by, their whole face lights up, and I think that they connect with the eyes of a dog. Dogs have a lot of emotion, and they never speak, so I wanted to do that with the cartoons. Especially with the character of Dog Man, I wanted him to speak through his emotions, through his eyes, through just his general movement, body movements and things. I thought that might be a better way to communicate, since everyone else is talking.”

Pete Davidson voices Petey the cat – Dog Man’s nemesis.Credit: Universal

The more you delve into the expanded world of these characters – let’s call it the “Pilkeyverse” – the individual pieces start to form a mosaic. In Captain Underpants we met two little boys who like to make comic books. And in Dog Man, Li’l Petey expresses himself using hand-drawn comics. Is this world and its inhabitants entirely fictional, or some form of autobiographical expression? Can an artist ever escape subconsciously – or consciously – rendering themselves in some form in their art?

“I can always just speak for myself, and everything I think I have done has been autobiographical, including the characters that I’ve come up with and the stories,” Pilkey says. “Dog Man, really, the first 12 books are about Petey’s arc, and Petey is the cat who starts out as a villain and becomes a hero, and he’s based on me, and that’s who I used to be. And now I’m writing about a new character, Big Jim, who is somebody that I’m trying to be, I’m trying to be more like this. So I think there is a bit of autobiography in everything that I’ve done so far.”

A cursory search of online video channels brings up countless classroom and library appearances, where Pilkey is greeted with the kind of screaming excitement that has, historically at least, been reserved for the likes of icons such as The Beatles and Elvis Presley.

“I’m not sure that I completely can grasp what they’re going through, but for me, it’s my favourite part of my job because the creation part is very lonely and isolating,” Pilkey says.

“But to be with a bunch of families and children who are just going crazy, it’s wonderful. I always have to remember that it’s not really about me, it’s about the books, and it’s about the shared experience of reading and how literacy brings us all together.”

Dog Man is in cinemas nationally from April 3. Dog Man: The Musical is at the Sydney Opera House from April 11 to 27 and Arts Centre Melbourne from September 30 to October 4.