Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman

Infobox Book |
name = Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Dav Pilkey
illustrator = Dav Pilkey
country = United States
language = English
genre = Children's novel
series = "Captain Underpants" series
publisher = Blue Sky (US),
Scholastic (US)
pub_date = 2001
media_type = Print (Paperback)
preceded_by = Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants
followed_by =

"Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman" is the fifth book in the "Captain Underpants" series by Dav Pilkey.

Plot summary

George and Harold's mean teacher (Ms. Ribble) is planning on retiring at the end of the school year. She forces everyone to make happy retirement cards for her. The boys make a Captain Underpants versus Wedgie Woman comic book instead (in the book, Captain Underpants is stopped by spray starch, which makes his underwear stiff and uncomfortable, and so he loses his powers until he gets some fabric softener). The boys are sent to Mr. Krupp's office. Once there, Miss Anthrope, the school secretary, made the boys run some errands by letting them pass out "Friday Memo" (a weekly newsletter that shows the events of the upcoming week) to the entire school while she goes out for lunch. Before that, they made their own Friday Memo by using Miss Anthrope's computer to change a few events. Later, Mr. Krupp appeared and the two boys say they're there to get Mr. Krupp to sign the happy retirement card (he writes "Signed, Mr. Krupp" in a blank card).

Later on, when Mr. Krupp learns about them changing letters on the sign and their comic book that they made about Ms. Ribble, he puts them in detention. They defiantly say they won't give Ms. Ribble her card. Mr. Krupp steals the card and says he'll give it to her personally. The boys secretly smile at how effective their use of reverse psychology was.

Mr. Krupp gives Ms. Ribble the card, which reads "Your one hot mama! Will you marry me? Signed, Mr. Krupp." Ms. Ribble agrees, and on Saturday, the wedding is held in the school auditorium. Mr. Krupp is too shocked by the whole wedding thing to admit the truth that he doesn't want to marry her. George and Harold insisted that the wedding should be in their math Test schedule, which was on Monday.

At the wedding, George and Harold have no tricks planned (for once). On the altar, just before they get married, Ms. Ribble breaks up with Mr. Krupp, saying she couldn't marry him because he has a funny-looking nose (the joke is that the two of them have identical noses). Mr. Krupp is angry and says he never wanted to marry her anyway; it was just a trick of George and Harold's. Due to that, Miss Ribble totally goes berserk and ruins the wedding. Ribble tries to attack the boys, but they luckily escape.

When school restarts, Ms. Ribble privately tells them that she has dropped their B's and C's to F's and G's (grade lower than an F; in Harold's opinion, there is no such thing as a G in the grading system; see below), so they have to stay back in fourth grade.

George and Harold decide to use their 3-D Hypno-Ring to hypnotize Ms. Ribble into changing their grades back to normal. They try to be safe about this, giving her instructions not to do anything weird like turn into Wedgie Woman and try to take over the world. Unfortunately, it turns out that the 3-D Hypno-Ring, when used on a woman, accidentally causes her to do the opposite of what she is hypnotized to do.

Ms. Ribble declares herself to be Wedgie Woman and attacks George and Harold in their clubhouse. Their container of super-power juice (from book 3) accidentally lands on her head, so she now has super-powered intelligence and hair. Her hair forms into several tiny hands, which can extend great distances, which is ideal for giving someone a wedgie and holding them hostage in midair.

Wedgie Woman kidnaps the boys and uses her super-powered intelligence to build robot copies of the two boys, Robo-George and Harold 2000. George thinks the Extra Strength Super Power Juice must have soaked into her brain. The robots are equipped with Spray Starch to take away Captain Underpants's powers.

The robots pose as George and Harold, except the two of them behave perfectly. When Mr. Krupp snaps (literally) at Harold 2000, he turns himself into Captain Underpants. He thought that the Robots were the real George and Harold and asked them to help (he stated that he's surprised that they were larger and can fly). He was defeated by the two robots and their spray starch. Meanwhile, George and Harold who were watching the action on Wedgie Woman's TV (built with a fish tank and an electric toothbrush) manage to escape from Wedgie Woman's deathtrap to find Captain Underpants.

Wedgie Woman then gives wedgies to all the police officers in town and hangs them from traffic signs, aided by her two robots, which have expanded to gigantic size. George and Harold find Captain Underpants, who is convinced the spray starch took away his powers (it didn't) thanks to the placebo effect (mistakenly called the placenta effect by George and Harold).

George and Harold make a comic book about how Captain Underpants is impervious to spray starch if he says, "I summon the power of Underpantyworld!” Captain Underpants reads the book, says the words, and regains his powers. He then defeats the two robots.

At the showdown between Captain Underpants and Wedgie Woman, George runs away, shouting to Harold that he's going to get rid of his box of extra-strength spray starch. Hearing this, Wedgie Woman steals all the bottles in the box and sprays them everywhere.

When the smoke clears, everyone is bald (except Captain Underpants, who was already bald). The box didn't contain extra-strength spray starch; it contained hair remover and George used reverse psychology to get Wedgie Woman to use it. With her hair gone, Wedgie Woman can no longer harm anyone.

The boys hypnotize Ms. Ribble, and by using reverse "reverse" psychology (they tell her to do the opposite of everything they want her to do, like a double negative), they get her to lose her superpowers, forget everything that happened in the last few weeks, become the nicest teacher in the history of the school, and bake fresh cookies for the class every day (If you look closely you can see that Ms. Ribble has a wig, and that the boys are wearing backwards baseball caps).

In speech bubbles a girl asks Ms. Ribble how she made the cookies, and Ms. Ribble says they were a snap and snaps her fingers to describe it as Mr. Krupp is walking down the hallway. The book ends as Mr. Krupp (now Captain Underpants again) filies out the window, with George holding his cape and Harold holding George's hand and saying "OH, NO!" and "Here we go again!"

Comic: Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman

The first comic in the book starts with an introduction on Ms. Ribble, ending with a pile of books falling on top of her. She is transported to a hospital, where they transform her into a robot where she is able to open up her hair, revealing a wedgie robo-claw. Captain Underpants appears and fights Wedgie Woman, but loses because Wedgie Woman arms herself with spray starch. Wedgie Woman hangs Captain Underpants on a pole, but some children walk by. By using a rope, they catapult him into a pool. The children pour fabric softener, so Captain Underpants has another fight with Wedgie Woman. This time, Captain Underpants is the victor. By creating a loop underneath Wedgie Woman, which the robo-claw follows Captain Underpants, but it goes for Wedgie Woman. Captain Underpants takes Wedgie Woman to jail and the comic ends.

Comic: The Origin of Captain Underpants

The second comic in the book starts with an introduction about Underpantyworld, Captain Underpants' fictional home world. Suddenly, the Wedgie Warlords appear and spray starch on Underpantyworld. However, the leader, "Big Daddy Long Johns", creates an amulet that is able to protect the entire planet from the starch. However, it drops into his son, "Little Baby Underpants" (a.k.a. Captain Underpants), so the entire planet becomes doomed. Big Daddy Long Johns and his wife, "Princess Pantyhose", are forced to save their son, and not the planet. By stretching the underwear, Big Daddy Long Johns and Princess Pantyhose catapult Little Baby Underpants towards Earth, while Underpantyworld is destroyed. Little Baby Underpants is adopted by two old people, who name him "Captain", after their favourite cereal. Captain has a dream, where he meets his parents, and because he has the amulet still inside, he is invunerable to starch. All he had to do was to shout the sentence "I summon the power of Underpantyworld", and he will overcome the powers of starch. He becomes a superhero named Captain Underpants, and never became afraid of starch anymore. The comic ends and in the real world, Captain shouts out the sentence. This book was a parody of Krypton's destruction.

Trivia/goofs

*On page 101, the Fourth Wall is broken, as the Harold 2000 kicks the kickball through the page.
*In some college grading systems, there really is a "G" grade, equivalent to -1 in the GPA calculations. In general, this is only given for extremely poor performance in class, or for academic dishonesty.
*The number of Wedgie Woman's hair arms changes throughout the book.
*Wegie Woman's hair is similar to that of Medusa the gorgon.
*The story about the destruction of Captain Underpants's homeworld was a joke on the destruction of Superman's homeworld.
*The Japanese monster movie shown on the television in the treehouse was most likely one of the Gamera movies (take note of tusks and turtle-shell).
*There were 3 rules in the book: There was a parody of "The 3 R's" (known as The Three S's). That was Sit Down, Shut your pieholes, and STOP DRIVING ME CRAZY! The other 2 rules were rule 411: Don't kick school propety into space, and rule 7,734: Don't transform into big, flying Robots during afternoon recess. The latter two were from Mr. Krupp's "Big Book o' Rules".
*On page 55, George says, "Silly Rabbi, tricks are for kids!" This is a reference to the Trix TV advertisements.
*On pages 118 and 119, the Wedgie Woman's hair spells out "Wedgie Power" in sign language.
*Wedgie Woman is a parody of Wonder Woman.
*While Wedgie Woman is building Robo-George and the Harold 2000, one of her hair arms draws a sketch of fully-clothed Robo-George that is identical to Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
*The comic on page 126 says "A far time ago in a galaxy long, long away ...", which is a spoof of the Star Wars starter textline, "A long time time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
*The Starch Ship Enterprise from The Origin of Captain Underpants is a parody of the Star Ship Enterprise from Star Trek. They both have the same build.
*On page 14, the letters on the floor (except Y) spell out 'LOL', the IM short for laughing out loud.
*Ms. Ribble is the only female human villain in the Captain Underpants series.
*"Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman" is mentioned in one episode of "Arthur" called "Fernkenstien's Monster".
*In the wedding, George and Harold ask themselves why couldn't the wedding be during monday's maths lesson, despite there being no school on monday.