This book is Messed Up. Oh, how I love it so. Eric Powell is the master of the non sequitur, combining a truly bizarre imagination with solid storytelling skills and beautiful art to create one of the best humor comics of our time. The Goon is a rough and tumble hero right out of a 50s gangster flick dropped into a B-movie with zombies and giant robots, and Powell also adds a bit of modern sensibilities in the form of touchy-feely parole boards and of course social commentary on big problems, like slime monsters or the rising costs of cream corn. Full of vivid action, characters with amusingly strange nonsensical motivations and goals and lots of laughs, this is another fantastic issue of The Goon.
I love the scattershot approach of Powell, which is more evident in the trade paperback but which shows up in this issue as well. As with the EC Comics of old, which The Goon resembles in some regard, he's not afraid to mix in a few short features or one-pagers alongside the main story. The two-page "All The World is Wonderful When You're an Idiot" is hilariously politically incorrect, something to cure your cynicism if it's been wounded by too many Archie Comics, and the ad for creamed corn at the end is a nice tie-in to the story as well as being funny on its own.
The main story, though, is where the real action is at. Powell introduces another bad guy beyond just the zombie master, a deluded super scientist who would be a dastardly master villain if only he wasn't so darned nice and confused why people don't see the good intentions behind his evil plots. The litany of scientific terrors he's unleashed upon the city are quite funny, as are his reasons for doing so, and his interaction with the old woman who dissuaded him from murdering the Goon likewise has a charming and fun sensibility to it.
Ironically, the nice guy isn't the hero of this story. Instead, the sour-puss Goon and hair-trigger temper Franky get those roles. The Goon is a likable bruiser, none too smart but charming in his way, and he gets to be funny in the slapstick physical vein thanks to Powell's fantastic action sequences, where he doesn't skimp on the squashed slime monsters, the big nasty robots or the use of a convenient fire axe. Franky gets to be the smarter but meaner one, and I like the little guy because of his bad attitude, not in spite of it. It's the same sort of attraction that Joe Pesci's character had in Goodfellas... you know he's a psycho, but he's so damned entertaining! Powell even introduces a little seriousness to the story with the Goon's inability to give in to the attentions of beautiful lounge singer Mirna, hinting at a little more backstory for The Goon than "big guy who kicks zombie ass."
If Powell's unusual ideas and humorous writing is appealing, his artwork is just irresistable. Those covers speak of a design sense that few possess, and they pretty much grab the reader and make them look, and his ability to capture a variety of styles is on display in every issue. In this particular issue, he does a Madison Avenue style ad for creamed corn, an Archie style "public service announcement" style strip and his regular story, which combines the realistic, lush style of a Neal Adams or Adam Hughes with the shadows and mood of Mike Mignola and a design sensibility reminiscent of EC Comics.
