I don't know about you, but I was annoyed when I heard about the Disney movie "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" back in 2001. When I heard about the Disney cartoon series it spawned, "The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius", I was downright appalled. It's not because of anything to do with the cartoon itself, however. It is because Disney likely got the concept for their series (I would go so far as to say they stole the concept outright) from an independent comic book series called The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius.
Created by Judd Winick (Green Arrow & Black Canary) and published by Oni Press, Barry Ween predates Jimmy Neutron by a couple of years and is immensely more entertaining. Originally released in single issues, they are collected in the following trade paperbacks:
1. The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius
2. The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius 2.0
3. The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius: Monkey Tales
4. The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius: Gorilla Warfare
They are also now available in a single volume called The Big Book of Barry Ween, which was released in comic book stores today.
Barry Ween is a 10-year old with an unparalleled genius intellect. In his own words, he was born smart, exhibiting self-awareness while in his mother's womb. Imagine a kid from South Park with the unlimited knowledge & technological resources of Reed Richards, the acerbic, paranoid wit of Bill Hicks & the mouth of a New York cabbie and you begin to grasp just what Barry as a character is capable of.
Barry is a bit of a paradox, a genius that recognizes that most geniuses before him have taken themselves way too seriously. His evaluations of what he considers to be historical intellectual peers are hilarious. For example, he sums up Thomas Edison thusly: "What an a**hole. Smart guy, but also a patent thief that had an ego to almost eclipse the mountain of self-importance I possess." But for all his successes, he has made his fair share of blunders in his pursuit of scientific knowledge, like giving Hippos the reproductive capabilities of rats ("STOP HUMPING, YOU FAT F**KS!!"). Indeed, it is the side-effects of these experiments that offer the best comedic material to work with.
These experimental snafus tend to affect his friends Jeremy & Sara and his parents most profoundly. In some of the stories, his parents get kidnapped by a drunken sasquatch, his father's body regresses to that of a neanderthal, Sara gets sucked into an alternate dimension & becomes a warrior princess, and Jeremy accidentally drinks a formula that turns him into a dinosaur. Most of these scenarios lead to a plethora of well-crafted blue jokes that would make Matt Stone & Trey Parker green with envy.
Oddly enough, the real surprise comes from how well those jokes go hand-in-hand with genuine human emotion and interaction. Barry would likely be as boring as a pre-"An Inconvenient Truth" Al Gore if it weren't for the rapport between him and his supporting cast, Jeremy, Sara & Bigfoot-turned-teenager Roxie. It is his interaction with them that makes the stories so rewarding and, in the case of the story "The Tale of the Great Ape", emotionally stirring.
The only flaw that I can find with this series at this point is the fact that there haven't been any new issues out in a few years. This is because Judd Winick is currently focusing his creative efforts on mainstream superhero books like The Titans for DC. As a fanboy, I can say that he is wrote some of the best Green Arrow & Outsiders stories in years, but I would much rather have some new Barry Ween at my fingertips. If you guys read the series and love it as much as I do, let's blow up his Facebook & MySpace pages and see if we can motivate him to get back to work on it.
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