Popverse's top stories of the day

• After conquering Madison Square Garden. TTRPG titans Dimension 20 set to mountain to conquer: WEBTOON comics with Fantasy High
• Who is Nico Minoru, Peter Parker's best pal in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man?
• Marvel created a miniature MCU based on Spidey's social circle 40 years before Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

Pete Davidson may be best known for his breakout work on Saturday Night Live over the past decade, but what people may not realize is he was- and remains - one of the youngest SNL cast members of the time. Davidson, born in 1993, is of an age that he grew up on Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books. That came in handy when he was called to be the big star in this week's DreamWorks Animation adaptation of the popular spinoff to the series, Dog Man.

"I'm a huge Dav Pilkey fan. I grew up reading all the Captain Underpants' books. My mom got them for me," Davidson tells CBS News. (Thanks, Amy Davidson!)

While the Dog Man spinoff comic book series didn't begin until 2016 - when Davidson was an adult and already two years into his SNL tenure - Davidson was tuned into what the kids in his family was reading... and it was more Dav Pilkey.

"All the young kids in my family, they all read Dog Man, they're obsessed with Dog Man," says the actor. 

While Pilkey's Captain Underpants was popular, Pilkey's Dog Man has hit rarefied air, with all 14 volumes of the series becoming the best-selling children's book of the year (comic or not). That led to DreamWorks Animation opting to adapt the series into an animated movie, which in turn led to a phone call to Davidson.

"And then right around the time I started noticing that, we got the offer," says Davidson.

Davidson doesn't play the titular hero of the Dog Man movie - he plays the villain, the antagonist, the big bad of it all Petey the Cat. (No, he wasn't named after Davidson.) Petey the Cat is described in the book series as "the World's Most Evilest Cat," and in the Dog Man movie, Davidson lives up to that by confounding and conspiring against Dog Man.

"It's a really fun, loud, layered character," says Davidson. "I don't get a lot of opportunities to stretch like that."

While not wanting to spoil the film, Davidson says that his role in Dog Man is "the best arc I've ever been given." Or, as he put it: "Usually I'm in a movie for, like, nine minutes, and then shot in the face, so it was nice to have a full [arc]!"

Dog Man opens in theaters January 31.

 Here's how to read the Dog Man books (and Captain Underpants) in order.