Retro Review: The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius

Oni Press; $8.95

A creation of cartoonist Judd Winick, Barry Ween is a 10-year-old genius/inventor whose experiments sometimes go awry with comedic and sometimes vulgar results. Fans of the animated series Rick and Morty can see what a very young Rick must’ve been like. Since working alone is no fun, Barry has a best friend and grounding influence in Jeremy, and the two deal with fixing some of the unintended consequences of Barry’s work, like interdimensional portals and human-to-dinosaur transformations. Of course, the supreme confident genius of Barry can be easily undone by the pretty face of his classmate Sara. He’s still able to rise to the occasion to save her and his classmates from snooty Austrian art thieves during a museum field trip. As charming as this all sounds, this is not for kids. There’s vulgar language, death and destruction and explosions and mad scientist mayhem. Just like Rick and Morty.

–Mark Huesman