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THE GOON: ROUGH STUFF TPB
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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Dark Horse Comics
Writer/Artist: Eric Powell
Colors: Dave Stewart
Editors: Scott Allie & Matt Dryer
Price: $12.95 US |
The truth is, I remember looking at The Goon when it first came out. The ad copy showed the off-beat sense of humor that has made it one of my favorite titles, but the black and white book was a bit on the crude side, and didn't grab my attention right off the bat. Happily, Dark Horse picked it up and gave dullards like me a second chance to appreciate it, and now they've gone all out and reprinted those first three issues, colored by coloring maestro Dave Stewart, and while there is definitely a rough quality to this work compared to the current Goon, a lot of what I love about the book was there from the beginning. The Goon is not a book that relies a great deal on continuity or foundation, but if it did, Rough Stuff is where we'd find it, as we see where the animosity began between Goon and the redneck werewolf, get the first appearance of Fishy Pete and even see the origin of The Goon and the true story behind Labrazio, the mob boss who supposedly runs The Goon. The artwork is rougher than the polished, gorgeous stuff that Powell does, but it looks pretty good in color, and the stories have the same manic energy and bizarre vibe that has made the book a cult hit.
While the current Goon series is a little more free-form, early on it looked like Powell was telling something that had a structure not unlike a mob war tale. The zombie priest and Labrazio were wrapped up in a struggle for territory, and The Goon was the front line soldier involved in the whole war. There was FBI involvement and double-crosses and a plot that is actually stronger than in the Dark Horse series, and the whole thing is structured much more like a limited series. Powell opens with the introductions, kicks into high gear with the struggles of The Goon versus a variety of the zombie priest's minions and hired guns, raises the stakes a little more with a capture and closes the whole thing off with The Goon's origin story and a surprising revelation.
Which is not to say that the wackiness of the current series isn't to be found here as well. I mean, within two pages we learn that the zombie priest is building a giant zombie chimp as a hobby, shortly into the second issue Frankie and The Goon have set a zombie on fire and tied him to the front of their car, and the minions who work for the zombie priest are the weirdest thing you'll find this side of a Garth Ennis comic. The delightfully amoral tone of the book, where The Goon and the Frankie are both protagonists and pretty much sociopaths, is also established early on. The book closes out with some webstrips, one of which demonstrates the casual (and yet hilarious) cruelty of the two leads during an exorcism-gone-wrong. Even this early on, the book was laugh out loud funny.
The biggest change is definitely in the artwork, and Powell seems determined (or perhaps he was blackmailed into) giving a warts and all presentation. The extras include some sketches and early pencil and ink work, which bears some of the hallmarks of his work but doesn't show the same sense of identity that can be found in Powell's work today. In fact, some of the work reminds me more than anything of a cross between the Wolverine work of Sam Kieth and Darick Robertson. In addition, though Stewart's colors cover up a lot of it, there's a surprising lack of background detail in much of the work, unusual given that Powell's current work is so detailed through and through. His work shows the same demented imagination right from the outset, however, and demonstrates that Powell was pretty much born to draw pulp monster style stories.
All too often, the early work of a true talent is nothing but disappointing. There's a saying that a creator has to get a lot of bad work out of their system before they can get to their good stuff, and while I don't necessarily believe it (or believe the number of bad pages that has often been quoted), there's definitely a truth to the notion that early work tends to be crude by comparison. However, Rough Stuff isn't just for The Goon completists. Despite having a different art style, this contains some pretty solid background stuff on the characters and the same wonderfully ludicrous humor that drives the book currently.
This comic book was not among this week's new releases.
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