The Goon Vol. 0: Rough Stuff
by Eric Powell
WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Take one sleazy Depression-era city with all its squirrel-sized rats, mob wars, rough-and-tumble bunch of dirtballs and add ZOMBIES and demons and whatnot. Need I say more?
Okay, well, THE GOON is one tough guy with his pal Franky, and he's A GOON for a mob boss called Labrazio. He fights turf wars with The Priest, a zombie who reanimates the dead as well as the Feds. All in the first three issues of Eric Powell's first miniseries THE GOON!
WHAT I LIKED: The humor is pretty great! A good portion of it's over the top, but hey, we're dealing with ZOMBIES here. Vampires, werewolves and the occasional demon-possessing-my-child come into play too.
Not only that, there's also a little mystery about the Goon's past: what's his real relationship with Labrazio? And so on.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Some humor might come off as flat. Franky running over people, for example. It's also a lot of information in three issues, so that might get some people winded.
EXTRAS?: Oh man oh man, there are so many extras here. Powell talks about the evolution of THE GOON, several concept sketches, a few pin-ups, and the original THE GOON comic strips that appeared on thegoon.com! Pretty impressive.
FINAL THOUGHTS: A pretty good outing, and the art gets even better as Powell refines his style. The Goon creates a world for itself, and thrives in it, so it can only go up from here.
