The Big Book of Barry Ween: Boy Genius

Sometimes one panel can tell you everything that makes you fall for a comic. I’ll be talking about one such moment from Great Teacher Onizuka (which has a vaguely similar rough, irreverent energy to this) in a feature soon, and I’ve just read another. A dear friend sent me this for Xmas, as it is a huge favourite of hers. I’d not read it at all – I’m not sure I have read any Winick at all.

What we basically have is Calvin without Hobbes, but this boy has an IQ of 350 (I’ll try not to resent there being a character with a stated IQ higher than mine…), so if he built a transmogrifier, it would really work (that’s if we assume Calvin’s didn’t). Anyway, the start of the second of twelve issues collected in this volume has a perfect second panel. Caption: “I’m not a firm believer in mistakes. My errors usually have ramifications I’m forced to deal with.” Voice from offstage (I’m guessing it’s his mom): “Barry!! What are you doing in there?!” Image: bathroom; tentacles coming out of the toilet bowl as Barry frantically pours a big bottle labelled “acid” down it, a panicky look on his face. Barry: “I’m masturbating! Go away!!” This is a magnificent summation of the style of this book – imaginative, funny, a bit undergroundy.

The look is very Bill Watterson – Winick is not quite the artistic talent he is (very few ever have been), but that’s very much the mode, with, as I say, a dash of underground sensibilities, maybe a touch of Drew Friedman here and there, even. He’s a strong and impressive cartoonist, good on expression, body language, character and movement, and he times everything exceptionally well. This is true of the writing too – excellent pauses and spaces.

He also has a great ear – approximately every other speech balloon made me smile here, an astonishing hit rate. The key thing about this, beyond its considerable inventiveness and variety, is that it is really, really funny throughout – other than Groo (and JT Lindroos called Sergio Aragones the funniest cartoonist ever here recently), I can’t think of another comic books in recent years, probably recent decades, so consistently funny.

It’s not perfect: I enjoyed the early stories more than the later ones, partly because it was fresh then, but also because the last part is a long continued story with serious drama and big fight scenes. He doesn’t draw these or the less caricatured adults terribly well, and we can see big action in a million other comics. It loses the frenetic pace of the early stories, too. To be fair, the smaller human drama in this final story is very well handled, with a genuinely moving final scene – but when it comes down to it, the stuff to love here is Barry effortlessly mentally outclassing aliens and the CIA, dealing with disasters like turning his best friend into a babysitter or creating a Savage Land in Antarctica, and the great lines on every page. And I do love it. I must seek out more Winick – anyone know if there is anything else by him this entertaining?