Skin & Bones (#164)

Plot: Frank and Joe visit Cody Chang, a friend in San Francisco, only to find his business is being robbed and vandalized. Frank and Joe volunteer to help Cody get to the bottom of things.

Straight out of central casting: Since the Hardys are in San Francisco, their friend for the book must be of Chinese descent — otherwise, what’s the point of meeting someone in San Fran, really? Unfortunately, young Mr. Chang is not as charmingly ethnic as you might hope: his parents gave him the reassuringly WASPy name of Cody.

Honestly: what kind of name is Cody?

He knows whereof he speaks: Frank and Joe discover Cody after he’s been knocked out by a blow to the the head. Frank is very businesslike about the matter: “You’ve got a lump ... and the skin’s all scraped away. You might have a concussion. Are you sure you don’t want to go to a doctor?” Cody declines, which is probably what he needed to do to get the Hardys’ approval — Joe’s, at the very least.

They have a stack of photocopied parental permission slips in their lockers: It’s Halloween, and Frank and Joe take a trip cross-country to see a friend. Although let’s be fair: Nothing these two learn from fifth-hour bio is going to help them in ten years when they’re taking surveillance shots for divorce cases and thinking that ITT Tech suddenly sounds pretty good.

Yippee-ki-yi-yay: When a thief makes off with his wheels, Joe rents a horse and rides in pursuit. This doesn’t happen anywhere but in almost funny comedies and chick flicks. Thankfully, this is neither, so Joe doesn’t have to ride the horse on the streets of San Francisco, weaving in and out of traffic, to catch up with the crooks.

Gnarly: When Joe asks for an opinion on his semi-glutteal werewolf costume, Frank says, “Awesome.” It’s difficult to tell whether he’s being sarcastic or not.

No sense of mail security in a pre-9/11 world: Frank and Joe receive a parcel with “Hardys” written on it — no return address or delivery address — wrapped in plain brown paper. It screams “Unabomber” or “anthrax,” but Frank dutifully opens it, even when the box inside contains a “lumpy package.” Perhaps Frank is just eager to get at lumpy packages.

Opinions: This one’s a bit too pat for me. The villain is obvious in the Scooby-Doo “not obvious” way — action centers around him, he has the access to pull the job off, but no one suspects him. It hits the cliches of San Francisco. There’s the requisite non-disfiguring violence and toothless threats. There’s a paternal stand-in for their father (Cody’s father, Philip). In the end, it seemed more that this Dixon had two ideas — the beetle colonies that strip bones and a trip to San Francisco, then decided to set it during Halloween.

Grade: C