The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius

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The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius is a comic book by Judd Winick, published over the course of three series between 1999 and 2002 (which, incidentally, makes it older than another famous boy genius).

It follows the life of Barry Ween - the world's smartest human, a ten-year-old Gadgeteer Genius who hides his intellect from the rest of the world - and his friend Jeremy Ramirez, a hyperactive and sex-obsessed, but overall rather normal, boy of the same age who's the only one to know Barry's secret.

The series is known for its profanity-rich dialogues and has been described as "Dexter's Laboratory meets South Park"; and it delights in subverting and lampshading many common comic tropes.


Tropes used in The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius include:
  • Adults Are Useless: The only thing Barry's parents do in the comic is fail to notice anything weird in their son (it's implied Barry mind-wipes them when they do, to be fair). Jeremy's parents hardly ever appear, though it's made clear his mom is overprotective and zealously religious.
  • Author Avatar: Sara is very clearly based in whole or in part on Winick's wife Pam Ling.
  • Awesomeness By Analysis: the probable explanation to the insane amounts of badassitude Barry harbors. See below.
  • Badass Bookworm: Barry has demonstrated to know enough anatomy to put most opponents out with a single finger. Just imagine what happens whenever he pulls out a weapon (of which he invented a lot).
    • Winick never got around to discussing it in the actual comics, but if you read the single issues' letter columns, he discusses occasionally that part of Barry's super-intelligence is the ability to tap into his body's physical potential via biofeedback and other methods. Thus, when Barry has to, he goes flipping around the landscape like Spider-Man on a crack bender.
  • Blessed with Suck: especially in the latest comics, Barry makes it clear how hard it is not being able to ever stop thinking. The frustration of living The Masquerade is also addressed early in the comic.
  • Child Prodigy
  • Cerebus Syndrome: The series started out completely devoted to humor. A late story where he traveled to another world was significantly more serious.
  • Crossover: The obscure story "Ween-Out" has Barry and Jeremy meeting Carrie from Greg Rucka's Whiteout. It was collected in Oni's recent Barry Ween omnibus.
  • Death Ray
  • Gadgeteer Genius
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: The time Barry accidentally turned Jeremy into a dinosaur. Barry earlier acknowledged that he makes a lot of mistakes during his experiments. Explosions, Body Horror, etc.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Barry's favorite way of dealing with who discovers his little secret.
  • Mistaken for Masturbating: Inverted. When asked by his parents why he's been in the bathroom so long, he shouts back "Go away, I'm masturbating!"; while trying to dispose of the results of his latest failed experiment (which stubbornly keeps trying to climb back out of the toilet).
  • Morality Pet: Jeremy often acts as this for Barry, who would otherwise deal with his problems by shooting or blowing them up.
  • The Masquerade: the only one to know of Barry's brain is Jeremy, plus possibly a few others who present no threat (old Mr. Goldblatt knows he'd be put in a nursing home as soon as he claimed to have seen Barry and Jeremy chase scurrying dinosaurs).
  • No Infantile Amnesia: Barry even remembers when he still was inside the uterus! He was already self-aware at the time.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Barry is an expert of any subject known to man, plus some that are still unknown. If you have questions about aliens or Bigfoot, he's your man.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: averted. Barry alters the world's sociopolitical equilibrium on a daily basis, but nobody knows it's him.

Barry: Who built a wallet sized hydrogen bomb yesterday and buoyed Eastern Europe's economy by covertly disrupting a secret trade embargo? Right! Just ME!

  • Super Intelligence
  • Time Travel: happens a couple of times by accident. When Barry intentionally builds a time machine, it only has a range of eighteen minutes - although he uses it to transfer himself into his old self, cell by cell, which can be expected to be harder.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: starting with the second series, Jeremy is obsessed with Oreos.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Barry, of course; which makes a particularly strident contrast with Jeremy's scatter-brainedness.
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