‘The Goon Volume 0: Rough Stuff’ – Eric Powell (Dark Horse)

Looking back over the blog, I’ve reviewed a few ‘Goon’ books but only really from ‘Occasion of Revenge’ (Volume 14) onwards. I thought it might be fun then to fill in the gaps and do a re-read of all the preceding volumes. Fun for me anyway, I’m a huge fan of ‘The Goon’ (hopefully you’ll enjoy it too) 😉It’s been years since I last read the series so a re-read is long overdue. I’ll try and aim for a volume a week, should be doable, but knowing me and these books, I’m just as likely to flip and go through the whole thing at once. We’ll see… 😊

All of that said then, lets kick things off with ‘Rough Stuff’ and see where it all began. It’ll be a short post, for reasons that will become apparent very quickly (so, not just the fact that I have a ton of work as usual then…)

The nameless man, the zombie priest, had come to town to build a gang from the undead. But even the undead fear THE GOON. The Goon's earliest battles with the undead are mixed with stories of his childhood years, where we're introduced to his circus performing family, and discover how The Goon became head of a notorious crime family. Originally a self-published, black-and-white comic series, The Goon: Rough Stuff collects the earliest stories of The Goon and his wise-cracking sidekick Franky. This re-mastered, colored edition, also contains an expanded sketchbook section with notes from series creator, Eric Powell, that features the earliest concept designs of our leading man, The Goon.

‘Rough Stuff’ is a disjointed but fun read that only comes into its own as you see the building blocks of the ‘Labrazio’ storyline come together. Up until that point, we have short stories that introduce the cast, and get them into a lot of trouble, but not an awful lot more than that. That’s pretty much the long and short of it, I told you this would be a short post today 😊 To be fair, I’d imagine that the travails of self-publishing, back in the day, perhaps left Powell with not as much room to tell a tale as he would have liked. That and the fact that he is clearly still finding his feet in this setting. That’s true not only for the story but also the artwork too, it’s not terrible by any means but you can tell that Powell is trying to get a feel for how it should look.

The important thing though is that it’s still a lot of fun. I can see why things like the talking chainsaw didn’t make it into the main run but there’s plenty to laugh along with while we’re here and that’s key.

And then we come to the opening rounds of the ‘Labrazio’ storyline and all of a sudden, ‘Rough Stuff’ isn’t just a trade that you buy because you’re a completist and you don’t want a gap in your collection. There isn’t a lot of time to fully experience it but you get a hint of the tragedy that defines the Goon as a character and it is hard hitting. It’s a great note to end the book on and promises big things to come (and having read the series, I can confirm that those big things do happen).

I’m not sure that I’d recommend ‘Rough Stuff’ as the place to kick off your ‘Goon’ reading (start with Volume 1 and then fill in any gaps later) but there’s a lot here to recommend it, both in seeing the direction that ‘The Goon’ could have gone (it’s fun but, I’m glad it didn’t) and just as a fun read in it’s own right. Maybe I won’t leave it so long before my next re-read.