Pilot & Huxley: The first adventure

Pilot & Huxley #1

by Dan McGuiness

A perfect blend of silly characters and gross humor that will make kids laugh and yell "eeeww!!!" at the same time.

Pilot & Huxley get zapped to another dimension by aliens seeking to enslave Earth. Things get weird when they traverse a swamp of bees, battle a sea monster, and end up in the nose of a giant dragon. But with help from a girl who can transform into a monster, they might just make it back home.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Humor, Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction, Middle Grade

64 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

Dan’s love of comics began when he got a job with a local comic shop. It was there that he started to draw comics about his colleagues and the daily happenings in the store. He takes his inspiration from the cartoons and comics that made him laugh as a child.

These days, Dan spends his time playing video games, watching cartoons, and creating children’s books. PILOT & HUXLEY: THE FIRST ADVENTURE was Dan McGuiness’s first book. He lives in North Adelaide, South Australia.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ten-year-old boy inside me really enjoyed this graphic full of gross-out humor, and colorful monsters.

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fast-paced, humorous (of gross out variety in particular), and very irrelevant tale follows two friends, Pilot and Huxley, through an other worldly conundrum caused by an overdue videogame. It is the first in a series of their adventures. The artwork is very heavy, bright, colorful, and cartoonish. For kids, I think the ending leaves a good opportunity to have kids say or draw what they think should happen next in the story.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Randomly bizarre-- will be perfect for 8 year old boys. And people like me. Apparently.

[Kathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good thing about this book: It was only 62 pages.
Bad thing about this book: It was 62 pages.

This is one of those books were the author thought of all the things he remembered as being funny when he was kid. Those things depended on the people and places he was at the time. They didn't translate well. It's like watching a sub come into a middle school and try to be funny. You want to save him but all you can do is stare and cringe and hope it will be over soon.

[Christiane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best friends Pilot and Huxley are sent to another dimension by aliens trying to take over the earth! In this strange new world, Huxley's name is a swearword, there are swamps of bees, and they meet a girl who can turn into a monster (or vice-versa). This is fun, gross humor that will appeal to Captain Underpants fans.

[zxvasdf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa. What a yucky, funny read impersonating as a children's book.

Under the subterfuge of bad taste, McGuiness addresses death, time travel, putting things in one's butt, embracing the inner shehim(and the little monster inside), and the virtues of your name being a swear word. It's a crazy ride, and it's a ride I'd like to get on in the next book.

[Luke Herbst · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travel to parallel universes with two kids. They forgot to return a video game and the grim reaper sends them to another universe. Kind of naughty at time, but a fun read. Written and illustrated by Dan McGuiness.

[Isa Rive · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not a GN to be taken seriously. Crude, sarcastic mad and funny. It’s a South Park/Ren and Stimpy, late 90s style of jokes. The illustrations are basic bright but have a certain gross charm. Humour has dated somewhat.

[Salty Sea]

thank you to the reddit thread that helped me identify this book through the search “2010s comic about two boys going to space”. so irrelevant but ive been thinking about reading this comic since it was a comic book i picked up and may have accidentally stole from a car wash/cafe whoops. this was plenty nostalgic to look through, it felt nice to revisit out of curiosity.

[Malachi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the graphics in the book. It starts off funny and the end was really really crazy.

-Malachi (age 9)

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was my rick and morty when i was 9

[Sarah BT · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you work with tween readers you can never have enough gross out humor and Pilot & Huxley offers up a new comic series with plenty of gross out humor.

The banter between Pilot and Huxley is tween perfect-exactly how tween boys talk! One boy is the calm logical one and the other thinks their entire adventure is so cool so they bicker back and forth at times which adds to the humor. The story is so out there and crazy but tweens won't mind-they'll be laughing along. There's evil aliens, a lost pirate, a grim reaper, shape-shifting girls, giants, laser beams, robots, sloberfinks-everything you could ever want in a comic, it's packed in here.

It has plenty of silly and gross-out moments-my favorite is when the boys are sent on a quest to retrieve a golden nose hair from a sleeping giant and have to trek through snot in order to complete the quest.

The comic is a fast read and reads somewhat like a cartoon you'd see on Cartoon Network, so I think this would be perfect to place into the hands of a reluctant reader. The jokes are smart, the dialogue is witty, and there's plenty of adventure. This one is perfect for tweens. Check out the sneak peek of Pilot & Huxley and be sure to add this to your tween comic order!

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this laugh-out-loud adventure, Pilot and Huxley have forgotten to return Alien vs Terminator vs Predator vs Robocop vs Jim Carrey to Awesome Video. Unbeknownst to them, the game contains the password to the Weapon of Doom that the aliens want to activate to rise up against the humans. The aliens call upon The Reaper to assist with helping them get it back. The Reaper transports the duo to another realm where Huxley is a dirty word, girls turn into monster fighting machines and taxis are powered by spit and snot. Pilot and Huxley must pluck the golden nose hair from the Mountain Giant’s nose if they ever want to return to Earth again.

This book is crude, rude and absolutely hilarious! It reminds me of what would happen if Star Wars was crossed with Bevis & Butthead and the Wizard of Oz.

[Patrice Sartor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to my 10-year old, and we both agreed on a 4-star rating. It's a very slim novel, though it is the first of a (potential) series. Whether or not you'll like it depends on: a) your tolerance of silly, gross-out humor, b) your tolerance of bizarre, nonsensical plot lines and c) how much you like colorful artwork that features humans with large, round heads and huge eyes. Happily, possibly as a result of being a former tomboy and a current mom of two tween boys (12 and 10), I laughed all the way through, and spent extra time looking at and appreciating the artwork.

The plot involves the boys getting transported to another dimension, and all their trials as they try to get back to Earth. It's weird, it's goofy, it's gross, and the target audience will love it.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

This slight graphic adventure for 3rd-6th grade kids surely suffered in my estimation thanks to my reading it right after reading the wonderful Zita the Space Girl . Pilot & Huxley just doesn't compare. It's a wacky, gross-out story of two friends suddenly transported to a strange world, and I have to admit from my field test that it is kid-pleasing, but the plot feels like it was made up as the author went along, the art is so-so, and the humor frequently too adult for the audience (not inappropriately so - just references that kids aren't likely to get, etc.). I'm not waiting around for #02.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

But if all this sounds tedious and juvenile to you, if a book that forces its characters to move from scene to scene via laser and/or giant instances of some of the gooier anatomical orifices sounds like it's pandering to the lowest common denominator, you should not read this book. Also, it is possible that you are my grandmother. Loved my grandmother, but she did not have one ounce of pretween boy in her, unless you count Hermie Edlund's little brother, who went missing in 1948, right about the time that Grandma was living in that gingerbread house in the middle of the forest.

Full review on Pink Me: http://pinkme.typepad.com/pink-me/201...

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grades 3-6

This new series, written for fans of Captain Underpants and similar stories, follows the premise that if you include enough one-liners and bathroom humor, you don't really need to rely too heavily on plot. Silliness abounds, and the bright cover and artwork give this lots of eye-appeal. Unfortunately, the story of the two friends who are transported to an alternate dimension is just so convoluted that it takes more effort than it's really worth to keep up with what's going on. Ultimately, this is a title that will probably circulate heavily but will not leave a lasting impression.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish the artwork was better. The story is wild and crazy, and reads like the author went to sleep with the TV tuned in to a cartoon channel, and this was the dream that came out.
The Grim Reaper acting as a repo man for a game rental agency is one of the tamer parts of this story, which involves fake portals into other worlds, real portals into other worlds, and a swamp of live bees. That just kicks off the real story, involving everything from a fairy tale quest to a meeting with the Internet personified. Loads of fun, almost too much, as the story frequently goes over the top, as does the artwork.

[Meep · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this at the suggestion of one of my students. I take their opinions seriously. She said it was funny and even went so far as to set it aside during check-in time so I could find it later. So I read it. I can see why a second grader would like this, but I didn't care for it; too much "random" and booger humor, not enough clever wit for a grown-up reader like me to really appreciate, but I'll definitely recommend it to the kind of student who might like jokes about boogers. There were a few fun meta jokes ("meet me in the next panel," and "a mysterious transmission that will be explained on page 46") and I would have liked to read more of that, but I'm not really the target audience.

[Kate Hastings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grades 4-6. My 6 year-old son liked this book a lot, but mostly because of the boogers and climbing into an alternate-universe bug through its backend. This is a fun read but some of the details are things young children (hopefully?) aren't as familiar with like robocop and jim carrey. General premise is that space aliens need to destroy the world but the launch codes are stored on a video game that Pilot and Huxley haven't returned yet. P+H get blasted into another dimension, and the silly adventure begins. I actually look forward to the sequel!

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pilot & Huxley are adventure graphic novels with incredibly silly humor. I think that children would definitely enjoy this easy read and find themselves wanting to read more. The illustrations were the part that I liked the most. They were drawn in typical cartoon/comic book style and they were also written like a comic strip. This would be a good choice for children who have low interest in reading. I think that these would be able to ease them into reading and spark their interest in different books.

[Tyler Holman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it . My favorite character is Pilot. He is really silly. He is always coming up with crazy things and then he always says he got it from the Internet. My favorite part is when there is a swamp of bees. They cross some of it and then they have to fight a monster that coughs up a pirate that has a speed fruit so they get to go quickly through the rest of the swamp. They are searching for the leader. They end up pretty much trashing the whole city. Finally they meet thee leader. It was awesome.

[Kaethe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tosh loved it. I'm indifferent. I can sort of see the appeal of random travel between different weird dimensions, with strange and gross adventures. But snot as a comic device just isn't as appealing to me as to a nine-year-old. The plot, such as it is, is very random, but there are some amusing jokes. I like that Huxley is a swear word in one world. I'd be willing to try another one, if for no reason other than they take almost no time to read.

[Kellee Moye · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow. What a mixture of craziness. It reminds me of some of the Cartoon Network shows that my husband loves where it jumps all over the place and I just don't get it. Well, this graphic novel is just like that.

There are students who are going to LOVE it! There are snot, butt and curse word jokes- they will eat it up. It is just not my thing.

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just the kind of fast-moving, silly and gross fiction that middle grade boys love, this series got a bit under my skin with it's sarcastic delivery and purposely(I think) illustration. However, some of the jokes were laugh-out-loud funny, and the book is exactly what it should be for the intended audience.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this really, really hard to follow. I wanted so much for it to be a book I could recommend to my students, especially those who are lower-level, reluctant readers, but... sigh. Not gonna happen.

[Ham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by this graphic novel. It made me giggle out loud a couple times while I was reading it to my kids. I also had to substitute a few words and censor whole dialogue bubbles. Overall I'd say it's a very funny book with pretty good art, but definitely not for kids under five.

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pilot and Huxley are beamed up by aliens wanting to enslave them. They end up on another planet and are given a series of "quests" to find they're way back home. Too crude my tastes.

I had South Park voices going through my head while reading.

Elementary School/Middle School

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, irreverent, crude, funny, bizarre, and illustrations reminiscent of South Park. What's not to like? It's always good to have another funny graphic novel series up your sleeve so I'm glad I discovered Pilot and Huxley.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just odd. I feel like I just read a really bad episode of South Park or Ren & Stimpy. I'm sure it will find its audience, but that audience is definitely not me.