Barry Ween is a fictional “10-year-old boy who secretly possesses the most powerful intellect on Earth”. His escapades are brilliantly depicted by Judd Winick in the pages of “The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius”.
Barry is a genius, and we’re not talking about the regular Einstein type of genius, or beyond belief Tesla genius, we’re talking about 350 I.Q. “by far the smartest organism on the planet” genius. We’re talking about “self-awareness-in-the-womb-smart” (click images to enlarge).
Being the smartest creature to ever walk this earth, he realizes early on that for his safety and the safety of those that he loves, he would have to remain hidden. After all, we all know what humanity is capable of once fear of the incomprehensible and the unknown takes hold.
His first few years were long and arduous but he withstood them, and at the age of 10 he acquired enough freedom to explore the limits of science and understanding, albeit, still in secret.
The above six panels are from the first page of the debut issue of the comic published in 1999 (full page). It was a three issue miniseries and contained some of the funniest most amazing adventures that a boy genius and his best friend, Jeremy, along with his childhood crush, Sarah, could have; including, getting sucked into a “big glowing vagina”, turning Jeremy into a dinosaur, and taking a field trip to the museum of modern art.
In 2000, Judd Winick released another three issues containing the adventures of Barry Ween. The comics included tales of aliens, Jedis, time travel, cowboys, Native Americans, and a run in with the surveillance state.
Staying true to one of the main themes of this site; privacy, government secrecy, surveillance, and the inverted totalitarian nature of our corporate state’s war on information, it is the account of Barry’s encounter with the surveillance state that we will sample.
The story so far:
Even though Barry has been fanatically methodical about covering up his tracks, he has underestimated the persistence of the surveillance state. They have been tracking movements of technology across the globe and have been able to narrow a significant percentage to one region, North Eastern United States, where Barry lives (click images to enlarge).
Two years of analysis later, the surveillance state pinpoints the location of the shipments to Barry’s house. Now they want him. They want to use his “powerful intellect” for their own means, much like how the NSA is desperately in search of the youngest and brightest minds in our society to join their ilk.
But there is a mishap. In their haste to get their hands on Barry, the data is inaccurately interpreted and the surveillance state ends up grabbing the wrong kid, Jeremy, the person that Barry cares for more than life itself.
Big mistake, because these “people are fucking with the wrong ten-year-old.” Jeremy is Barry’s best friend, the person that knows him and his capabilities better than anyone else, the person that he would go to the ends of the earth for.
Barry tracks down Jeremy in the headquarters of the NSA… oops, I mean the surveillance state. He gets as close as he can in stealth mode, but once they begin to hurt Jeremy, he breaks stealth and goes berserk, the way that only “the most powerful intellect on Earth” can.
Below you will find what happens once Barry comes to the rescue. I’m willing to bet that what Barry does in these pages is pretty close to what many of us would like to do and say to the minions of our surveillance state, especially the ones that bare such an uncanny resemblance to the main villain in charge in this issue (click images to enlarge).
The following pages are from “The Adventures of Barry Ween: Boy Genius 2.0”, issue #3, p. 21-26.
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