The Goon: Rough Stuff [Paperback]

Eric Powell (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2004

Dark Horse Comics brings you the origin of Eric Powell's The Goon, the earliest stories published for the first time. The Zombie Priest has just set up shop on Lonely Street and intends to build an undead army, and the Goon's the only man who can stop him. His early battles with the undead are mixed with stories of the Goon's youth, as we meet his circus-freak family and learn how he came to be the head of a notorious crime family. Also included in this volume is a look at the creation of the Goon and his world with a special "Evolution of The Goon" sketchbook section.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

If at first Powell's square-jawed and square-headed, hypermuscular hero, the Goon, looks like some kind of Hellboy rip-off, look again. The Goon and his milieu are retro in appearance and allusions, and making a movie of them wouldn't need as big an FX budget as Mike Mignola's demon-gone-good required. Oh, sure, the Goon tangles with the supernatural, but supernatural isn't paranormal, like Hellboy's antagonists. The Goon just has to stomp zombies now and then. His other foes include regular, or at least real, humans, such as cops, and a mad scientist who's turned his flesh into gold, and those plug-uglies with tails, the Mud brothers, and a redneck werewolf. Just regular guys. The Goon is an old-style enforcer for reclusive mobster Labrazio in a seemingly Depression-era seaside burg, where the talk's like the scripts for the Dead End Kids, and the Goon must have a sidekick like Franky, a pint-size palooka with pupil-less peepers right out of Little Orphan Annie. Franky's eyes aren't Powell's only tip of the hat to comics tradition. He draws one extended flashback in a style reminiscent of graphic-novel elder statesman Will Eisner and another to resemble early Mad stalwart Bill Elder's work, and he frames one of the flashbacks with fumetti starring his nine-ish-looking son. Another Mad ace, Wally Wood, exerts a more pervasive influence on Powell, yet he is always very much his own man, a fearless parodist of even the most shopworn tough-guy cliches. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse Comics (March 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569719993
• ISBN-13: 978-1569719992
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,791,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than people think, May 15, 2008

By 

Jess Newman (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Goon: Rough Stuff (Goon (Unnumbered)) (Paperback)

This volume of the Goon isn't the Goon proper; it's the preceding issues released independently while Eric Powell was still small-time before he got picked up by Dark Horse.
Everyone, including Powell himself in the introduction to this book, will tell you it's not that great, that it isn't quite up to snuff, or that it just wasn't getting it right. I disagree. Maybe it's just that Powell himself admitted it wasn't his best work, and the hordes of loyal fanboys followed obediently in slandering the work in this book. Actually, the book isn't half bad. The art is different, but still great. Although Powell says it was still rough and amateurish, you'd be hard pressed to find better art in the indie community. The art is great, actually more detailed than the art on display in the Goon series proper, it just doesn't have as much of the cartoony stylization.
There's really nothing wrong with this book. It still has a lot of the charisma of the Goon, only a bit less polish. It's well worth $12, and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay, As Title Says, "Rough", May 16, 2006

By 

John Sears (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Goon: Rough Stuff (Goon (Unnumbered)) (Paperback)

Perhaps worth picking up for novelty value alone, The Goon is a comic about the hugely overmuscled, eponymous mob enforcer, who is a one-man last line of defense against the new, undead organized crime threatening some nameless dive of a town in some nameless, misbegotten part of the world. The Goon has to bludgeon back the forces of zombiism, vampirism (of a decidely effeminate sort), giant fish monsters and corrupt G-Men, and does it all with decidely simple-minded mayhem.

The book itself is drawn to reflect, and obviously tips its hat to, a sort of idealized Great Depression style of storytelling. Times are tough, men are men (except when they're rotting corpses), and you'd rather side with the mobsters than the cops, because you can trust the mob.

Some interesting humor here, gobs of violence, and a bit of nice character development and storytelling at the end. It's not my favorite comic ever, but definitely a nice introduction to a series I might want to explore further down the road.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you are reading in order, keep reading!!!, September 18, 2006

By 

Mr. Chad J. Mitchell - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Goon: Rough Stuff (Goon (Unnumbered)) (Paperback)

As with most writers, the first stuff is not necessarily the best, and please, take this into consideration when reading The Goon. This book was first published prior to Dark Horse picking it up.

When it was finally picked up DH went back, and colorized and touched up, and this is the product of that. This is what started it all, and I insist you continue to read this series if you haven't.

Powell, I feel, is one of the best writers on the market today, and this book is a testament to what someone who is dteremined and has a dream can do.