Arthur Goes Sixth I: The Madness of Queen George
INTRODUCTION
The "Arthur Goes Sixth" series continues the story from "Arthur Goes Fourth" and "Arthur Goes Fifth". Arthur and his friends are starting their first year at Woodlake Middle School in Elwood City. Conveniently, the sixth grade classes were recently moved from Lakewood to Woodlake, which explains why Prunella, Brain (who skipped a grade), Molly, and Rattles were able to attend Lakewood in "Arthur Goes Fifth" and are now middle-schoolers with the others. Arthur and the gang will have a new teacher and new classmates, whose identities will gradually be revealed. For the benefit of those readers who haven't read "Fourth" and "Fifth" due to lack of time, laziness, or having a life, here are the characters who will figure most in the "Sixth" series, along with summaries of what happened to them in the earlier stories.
Arthur
Our favorite aardvark boy is still his same old jolly self. (You'd think that since it's his show, he'd have the lion's share of "screen" time. However, I've made an effort to use all the characters equally.) Arthur counts among his accomplishments: Serving as student body president during his fifth-grade year, participating in a jazz quartet, and being briefly turned into a cat.
D.W.
Our favorite whiny brat…er, aardvark girl has had many adventures, including saving the world from an evil extradimensional Pomeranian, accidentally turning into a unicorn, and taking lessons on misbehavior from Rattles. (Oh, and there was the whole affair about the son of D.W. and Brain visiting from the future, the full implications of which I have yet to explore.)
Nadine
Early in the "Fourth" series, a girl who looked exactly like D.W.'s imaginary friend Nadine (even down to the tail) was introduced to her kindergarten. Stupefied at first, D.W. soon befriended the girl. (Thanks to the magic of time travel, the real Nadine was able to serve as the inspiration for the imaginary Nadine. Just read it, OK?) Nadine's mother is Maria Harris, who works at a jewelry shop.
The Reads
A new Read was born during the summer, Wilbur Read, weight 10 lb. 6 oz. He is a healthy, irresistibly adorable baby aardvark boy. The Read house is now a smaller and more cramped place, partly due to the fact that Grandpa Dave, afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, has moved into the guest bedroom.
The Tibble Twins
Tommy and Timmy, since the death of their grandmother from a heart attack, have been raised by their mother Tanya, giving her someone else (besides herself) to spend her lavish divorce settlement on.
Buster and Bitzi
Absent for much of the "Fourth" series after Bitzi married Harry Mills and moved to Chicago, Buster returned to Elwood City just in time for the "Fifth" series. It didn't take long for him to be abducted by an amorous alien girl and spirited away to the planet Yordil. (The Yordilians, it turned out, had a unique problem—nearly all their males were wiped out in a biological disaster. The typical Yordilian female, therefore, will stop at nothing to get her man.) His friends managed to rescue him, but complications arose in his life once again when Bitzi adopted Petula, a baby girl with magical powers. A baby girl whom, for reasons I won't go into here, the Yordilians wanted dead. And they would have killed her if not for the interference of those meddling kids, who had a little help from Doctor Who in an unprecedented crossover. Things went from bad to horrible when Harry abandoned Bitzi, Buster, and Petula at the height of the Yordilian invasion of Earth, an act which prompted Bitzi to demand a divorce. The divorce was eventually granted, and Harry went his way. Now Bitzi is back on the dating scene, while Buster, for his part, has developed an irrational phobia of girls and all things girl-like.
Principal Haney
Mr. Haney, after being shot three times in the chest (see note on Prunella below) and receiving an artificial heart transplant from alien surgeons, departed Elwood City in the interest of his own safety. His replacement is James Polk, a good friend of Francine's. (There were hints of a possible romantic relationship between Mr. Haney and Bitzi Baxter. We'll see where that goes.)
Francine
I like Francine so much, I decided to put her through the wringer. Early in the "Fourth" series, she died. While her corpse was still warm, Brain restored her to life through deft use of time travel. Her troubles were not yet over, as she became an unwilling participant in a body-switching experiment that left her in Sue Ellen's shoes. When she finally regained her own body, she discovered that Sue Ellen was still there, leaving her with two personalities and two sets of life memories in one head. (Confused yet?) Later, she engaged in a romantic relationship with Arthur that ended when he cheated with another girl, and held a grudge against the boy for an entire summer. Near the end of the "Fifth" series, she stowed away in a taxicab in which Catherine and her boyfriend, Mitch, were eloping. Ending up in a seedy neighborhood, she would have fallen victim to a kidnapper if not for the intervention of James Polk, a devout Christian. His influence led Francine into a brief flirtation with Christianity.
Muffy
Muffy's snobbishness was toned down somewhat by her friendship with Van Cooper, a classmate whose lawyer father was a bitter enemy of Ed Crosswire. (Cue Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture…) Her parents placed her in a private school headed by the infamous Dr. Pryce-Jones, but she rebelled, and even ran away for several weeks. Over time the Crosswire fortune was whittled down, particularly during a period when a magical influence compelled Ed to always tell the truth. They moved out of their mansion and into a condo, replaced their limo with a Mitsubishi, and fired Bailey, who went on to become a kinetic artist. After all that, there was yet more character development for Muffy to endure. Present with George at the scene of a murder committed by aliens, she was swept off to the planet Orelob with her family and the Nordgrens as part of an interplanetary Witness Protection Program. Among the trinkets she acquired during her jaunt in outer space was an optical fiber dress that displayed her face in real time on the front. This unusual item caught the attention of Gelt, a heartless financier, who demanded the dress in exchange for the loan he had offered to put Crosswire Motors back on its feet. Ed, needing the money but unwilling to break his daughter's heart, faked an attack on Muffy and stole the dress from her back. With Fern's help, she managed to expose Ed as the perpetrator and rescue the dress from Gelt's clutches. Van's father, outraged at what Mr. Crosswire had done to Muffy, came to her aid with a restraining order against him. Cut off from her parents, Muffy went to stay with Wyatt Holberg, a young gay friend, and his two mommies. The Crosswires are now separated, and Muffy lives with her mother and baby brother Tyson.
Binky
Binky began to smarten up in fourth grade. He joined the cast of New Moo Revue, a revived Mary Moo Cow series, pirouetting about in a costume as new character Mini Moo. The Tough Customers mercilessly teased him about this career move, but, in the fashion of a true Arthur character, Binky stood his ground. In later adventures, he was treated to a glimpse of what his life would be like if he had been born a girl, and became involved romantically with a not-so-nice parallel universe version of Sue Ellen.
Brain
The first shock to Brain's peaceful, ordered existence came in the form of Jason, his son from the future (by D.W.!). The second was the introduction of Tegan, the older sister he had forgotten. Tegan had the superhuman ability to merge mentally with other people, implant memories, and even alter a person's identity. Because of her powers, she was locked away from human knowledge with a number of other similarly gifted individuals, collectively known as the Brainchildren. The third shock was Brain's discovery that he was a Brainchild, endowed with the power to erase the memories of others. His efforts to avoid being forcibly inducted into a Brainchild liberation army led to an explosive confrontation and a crossover with The Simpsons.
Sue Ellen
Turns out Buster was right all along—Sue Ellen and her parents are really aliens! The Armstrongs are, in fact, agents from the planet Yordil, fortunate enough to be living on Earth during the crisis that killed nearly all of the planet's men. Sue Ellen doesn't learn this fact until halfway through "Fifth", having been adopted by her teacher, Mrs. Krantz, under the mistaken belief that her parents were dead. Very much alive, Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong masterminded the Yordilian invasion of Earth which they hoped would solve their planet's all-the-good-men-are-gone problem. Sue Ellen, shocked by what her parents were attempting, helped Doctor Who to thwart the invasion. In a nearby parallel universe, however, lived a version of Sue Ellen who was proud of her Yordilian heritage and hated the Doctor, blaming him for the death of April Murphy, a future Sue Ellen who had traveled into the past and changed her identity. A shift in quantum realities transported this "anti-Sue" from an Earth under Yordilian control to "our" Earth, where the Yordilians had been defeated. Once here, she resumed her romance with Binky and searched for an escape route back to the reality she knew. Eventually a being called the Trickster (borrowed from The Sarah Jane Adventures) offered to take her home, on the condition that she choose one of her friends to die. She chose…
Fern
Sue Ellen is thankfully back to normal, but Fern is another story entirely. The Fern you knew is dead, accidentally struck and killed by James Polk's car. The Fern of the story to come is her extradimensional duplicate, having arrived from a world where the Yordilians rule and her parents were executed for taking part in a resistance movement. This Fern views her new parents as empty copies of her old parents, and harbors resentment towards Brain, who made it impossible for her to return to her home dimension. (Brain, ultimately, had no choice, because the Trickster's dimension-hopping device had the unfortunate side effect of immediately killing the duplicate of anyone who used it.) So great is her resentment that it almost rivals the immense crush she has on the boy…
Prunella
No one has had it harder than poor Prunella. She's been vaporized, turned into a boy, hit by a bus, abandoned on a lonely highway, subjected to alien mind control, forced to shoot the principal…and that's just the stuff she remembers. At one point, due to short-term memory impairment, she would wake up every morning only to forget everything that had happened the previous day. Add on top of that her eternally unrequited love for Binky, and you've got yourself a sad, sad rat.
George
I admit, I couldn't find much for George to do. He helped Fern unmask a ghost, he exposed an alien posing as a psychiatrist, he visited another planet with his girlfriend, Muffy…where to go from there? Buckingham Palace, naturally.
Beatrice "Beat" Simon (OC)
Beat is one of the gang's classmates, a British girl whose intelligence rivals the Brain's. She is half rabbit and half aardvark, and has a very attractive figure as a result of her premature puberty.
Van Cooper (OC) and Odette Cooper (OC)
Rejoice, Van fans! The Coopers moved back to Elwood City during the summer, so they'll be part of the story as before. For the uninitiated, Van is a wheelchair-bound duck boy from a family with six children, all of them ducks but one. His most prominently featured sibling is teenager Odette, a swan girl who loves ballet. (No, she wasn't adopted.) Van and Muffy are close friends, despite their fathers' mutual hatred; Muffy once even went so far as to declare Van an "honorary girl". Odette, despite being older, often joins the Arthur gang in their adventures. Early in the "Fourth" series she was kidnapped by polygamists, an experience from which she has yet to fully recover.
Wyatt Holberg (OC)
Wyatt was the first openly gay character to be introduced in the series. In his first appearance, he competed with Fern for a voice role in New Moo Revue. Much later, as Fern was quitting the show, she asked Wyatt to take her place. On this occasion he met Binky and revealed his orientation. Later still, with a restraining order keeping her father away, Muffy chose to stay at Wyatt's house and met his two mothers, both artists. Muffy and Wyatt became fast friends and shopping buddies, and their comradeship remains strong to this day.
Next chapter: The story begins!