MITNG reviews Dark Horse’s The Goon: Them That Raised Us Lament

I’m embarrassed and relieved to admit that this is the first time I’ve ever read a Goon comic book,but hold on, before you send me hate mail…I really liked it and will probably continue reading them? How’s that? No? Perhaps I deserved that, but you only get one…deal? There’s been a lot of Goon talk lately, especially since David Fincher and Eric Powell launched that Kickstarter to get the full length feature animated Goon film funded. Since then they managed to raise the 400k they set their goal at, so we can expect to see that baby anytime now or at least a trailer.

I have no excuse for not getting into this series earlier, but shit happens sometimes. But I’m not kidding when I say, it was if the G-d of comic books said “this is the day” cause this TPB set me up perfectly as too the origins of The Goon and how him and his partner in crime Franky became friends more or less. As these things go creator/writer and illustrator Eric Powell wove together several short stories some zany, some sad, like the story of The Goons mother Kizzie, and one that even pokes hard fun at the state of the comic book industry today. However, the one thing I did know about The Goon before reading this was that he has a lot of run-ins with the undead, but not so much in this trade. There is fighting though and a lot of supernatural mischief, enough to satisfy at least, but no zombies. The art and dialogue are spectacular, and when I say spectacular I mean I get it. The pace of each story is great and to the point. The humor is crass, but kind of tame for me. The life of The Goon goes through several phases in this book and having no idea about it’s author I thought, a lot of times he wasn’t taking his own character seriously. Then I saw how he drew himself in the particular story in question and was like “oh yeah…I get it”.

If the feature does get released it’s sure to be a winner visually and script wise. Them That Raised Us…is the first, but certainly not the last of The Goon books I’ll read. In fact, in the coming days Comixology can look forward to a few downloads by your humble narrator. Go out and pick this one up you palooka.