‘The Goon Volume 3: Heaps of Ruination’ – Eric Powell (Dark Horse)

This week has been a bit of a nightmare in terms of finding time to get any reading done (work in particular ; ‘Sharpe’s Tiger’ is giving me reproachful looks (as I write this) but there literally hasn’t been the time to really get stuck into it. Oh well, maybe things will pick up over the weekend. In the meantime, a little bit of reading time (and I do mean little…) finally came my way, last night, but I wasn’t up to much so took the opportunity to carry on with my ‘Goon’ re-read instead. And… Here we are 😊 As always, remember that I’m a pretty big fan of this series so don’t be looking for anything too objective here. Especially as ‘Heaps of Ruination’ is one of my favourite books in the series as a whole…

Lonely Street comes under all manner of threats both tragic and hilarious in this collection of four of the most beloved Goon stories to date. The Goon learns that a friend is in the clutches of the Zombie Priest and must call on each of his weird allies to help in the rescue. An interdimensional marauder unleashes the bizarre fury of El Hombre del Lagarto. An encounter with a vampire takes an unexpected, poignant turn. And Hellboy creator Mike Mignola cowrites and illustrates an appearance by his celebrated character, in one of the strangest crossovers of all time…

Apart from a brief cameo from Peaches Valentine (which I don’t get, your mileage will inevitably vary), there isn’t a single story in ‘Heaps of Ruination’ that misses the mark. It’s a procession of hit after hit with ‘The Vampire Dame Had to Die’ and the Hellboy tale particular favourites of mine. I love how the Hellboy crossover embraces its inevitable weirdness and just runs with it, with both Hellboy and Goon/Frankie struggling to make any sense of the situation. All that and the Communist Airborn Mollusk Militia as well 😊 There’s no plot here, to speak of, and that turns out to be the best approach from where I’m sat. Sometimes, introducing something brand new to a setting, and seeing what happens next, is all you need to do. ‘The Vampire Dame Had to Die’ is not only a smart little commentary on ‘Anne Rice’ style vampires but also an intriguing look at the aftermath of ‘Chinatown’ for Goon. At this point, we still don’t know what happened but if a powerful vampire would rather die than live with the knowledge… I’ve read ‘Chinatown’ a few times but I’m still excited to read it again.

While earlier books have hinted at a broader plot, and just concentrated on short tales, ‘Heaps of Ruination’ feels like a switch from that approach to focussing fully on what I’ve always called the ‘Labrazio storyline’. The raid on Lonely Street opens the book and is just superb, all the way from the little messenger (‘Tell me a story. A very good story. If I don’t like your story, I keep your eyes’) through to Merle’s attack on the zombies; the action doesn’t stop and you know that this is something that the zombie priest cannot back down from. Like I’ve said, I’ve read this series a number of times now and I’m still excited to see what comes next.

The only story that didn’t quite hit the mark (although it was still funny) was the tale of El Hombre del Lagarto and to be fair, that one is on me for not being able to talk Spanish. My eldest daughter will be taking GCSE Spanish though, maybe I’ll give it to her and see if she can translate… 😊

‘Heaps of Ruination’ is another step up in quality for ‘The Goon’, I’m not sure I can hold off for another week before I pick the next book up. We’ll see…