By all means, I shouldn’t like The Goon. For some reason, however, it brings me back in every month with a little bit of humour, a whole lot of violence and a bit of tongue-in-cheek references to the world that serves as its audience. One only needs to look at Eric Powell’s Twitter feed in order to see what I mean.
And that continues this month with a weird little recap of some events that’ve happened so far in the series, and a reiteration that one of the chief antagonists, the Zombie Priest, is a force to be reckoned with. Naturally, you don’t want a chief archenemy to grow stale, so in a little bit of a one-to-one chat with the reader, the Priest lets us know what longtime fans have already found out: you do not mess with the Priest.
What I liked:
- The Priest’s story was well narrated and served to both entertain and educate about continuity. Seeing Goon take down his aberrations served to get fans up to speed on a series that has seen its share of delays. However, I just have to emphasize that this re-telling did not feel awkward at all. Major points to the creative team.
- The Goon and Frankie have their share of quips in the back-up story, which gave me a taste of what I was aching for during the main narrative. I’m praying that it wasn’t just dumb luck, and they saw there was a bit of an imbalance in the issue.
What I didn’t:
- Until the back-up story, I felt that this issue was very “un-Goon.” That’s to say, however, that we’ve come to expect a little bit of obtuseness from the main character - a little roughness that gives it some character. It doesn’t mean that Zombie priest isn’t a good character, but this isn’t his book. Seeing some sophisticated and creepy narration was nice, but I wouldn’t want it to be a regular thing.
The Goon #41
Dark Horse Comics
$3.50
The Verdict: This book gets four brass knuckles out of five from me because it managed to tell a long backstory with poise and flair. However, it kind of hijacked the book’s normal mood to do so; let’s just say I’m happy it’s only lasting for one issue.
