Opie and Ned are a couple of children who watched their mother get shot and killed. Not content to simply let the culprit get away with their crime, they begin their quest to track him down and make him pay. Along the way, they get into all kinds of crazy situations.
The comic was released in October of 2011.
Varmints contains examples of:
- Alliterative Name: One of the outlaws is named Two-Bit Teddy Tuscon.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Ned can be this to Opie.
- The Big Race: The Crooked Butte Dirtbag Derby. The prize is a meeting with Pa.
- Black Bead Eyes: Ned has these. So do quite a few characters in the book.
- Disguised in Drag: One outlaw, Derrick Stafford, wears a woman's dress and apron, complete with a wig and a bonnet, while on a job for Pa. He ends up catching the eye of a Pinkerton Agent.
- Honest John's Dealership: Smilin' Jim. When Ned goes to buy a horse from him, Smilin' Joe manages to swindle him from the rather impressive horse Ned was looking at, and sells him a mule.
- Insistent Terminology: Opie insists that they "borrowed" the large hairy man's horse rather than stole it.
- Pirate Girl: Captain Bellows, one of the racers in The Crooked Butte Dirtbag Derby.
- The Seven Western Plots: A revenge story chronicling the misadventures of young kids Opie and Ned trying to find the man who shot their mother.
- The Silent Bob: The big hairy guy with a bearskin on his back doesn't do much talking. He laughs at one point, though.
- Sweet on Polly Oliver: A Pinkerton Agent falls for Derrick Stafford, an outlaw, because he thought he was an old flame of his.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The lengths Pa went to to off a bunch of outlaws. To wit, he set a train to explode, both from dynamite and an overheated boiler, and he has the train heading for a steep drop.
- Totem Pole Trench: Opie and Ned do this to enter a saloon where kids aren't allowed. Ned acts as the head and refers to himself as "Casual Joe"
- Wild West
- You Have Failed Me: Pa has several outlaws who've failed him in the past all get on a train by saying that he's hiring them for a job. In reality, he rigged the train to explode, both from dynamite and an overheated boiler, and has it on a path to a steep drop.
- You Killed My Mother: Opie's motivation for their trip is to track down their mother's killer.
