Lauren RabainoA while back, my good buddy who got me into comics let me borrow his copy of “The Goon: Nothing but Misery.” I thanked him but it sat on my floor for a while gathering dust as I wasn’t particularly inclined to pick it up.
At the time I was reading a lot of “Hellboy” and felt very serious about my comic reading, so I didn’t really feel like reading anything else. Don’t get me wrong, Hellboy is amazing and has quite a bit of comedy thrown in there, but it is above all a serious comic.
Before too long though, I finally picked up “The Goon.” In the first page, I was hooked. I mean, with a story titled “Die, Fish, Die!” and a zombie poking a severed head with stick on the first page, the Goon and his pal Franky cracking dirty jokes over few beers, and a giant hand from the sky crushing a new reporter throughout, how could I not pick it up? You don’t see that every day! “The Goon” is a glorious mixture of 1940s culture and terminology, with film-noir elements, puns, lovecraftian horror and some good old fashion violence. Just imagine a noir detective film without the detective and a guy who looks like he’d work at the docks swapped in, and, instead of your typical gangster of the ’30s, some green zombies and that would pretty much be “The Goon.”
I wouldn’t say that The Goon himself is a crime fighter or even that he is one of the good guys. But he and his little sidekick Franky certainly know how to beat the crap out of the bad guys, by which I mean gangs of fish creatures and hordes of zombies led by an evil zombie priest without a name.
I don’t really know how to categorize this series. I wouldn’t call it horror, though there are loads of horror elements in it, but I wouldn’t call it purely a comedic comic either. The stories are incredibly witty, chock full of wonderful one-liners, fake ads and some great comedic violence. Eric Powell, the writer and artist of “The Goon” really knows his stuff. The art is perfect for the series, too.
Let me just ask you a few questions, just in case “The Goon” doesn’t already seem appealing to you. Do you enjoy gratuitous amounts of comedic violence, such as a fish-man getting a brick stuffed down his throat? Do you like zombies, but not just normal ones, but the kind that can sing and dance? Do you like stories of haunted houses and hidden loot? Do you like such 1930s phrases as mooks, dame or dirty egg-sucking dog? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then without a doubt, you will enjoy “The Goon.” Shoot, even if you didn’t answer yes to any of those, you will still like “The Goon,” even though there is probably something seriously wrong with you.
Be sure to check next week’s article on Alan Moore’s highly acclaimed “The Watchmen,” soon to be released as a movie next month, which I am totally stoked for.