‘The Goon: My Murderous Childhood (and Other Grievous Yarns)’ – Eric Powell (Dark Horse Comics)

Those fancy Dan’s uptown have their cops and G-Men to keep the peace; all Lonely Street has is one man who is ready to take a stand against the Zombie Priest, killer robots, a pie crazed skunk ape and Fishy Pete’s sexually frustrated Kraken mother...
That’s ok though as this man is the Goon and he has a beating ready for anyone who gets in his way, especially if Spider insists on cheating at cards again!

I’m slowly working my way through the trade paperback ‘Goon’ collections (and hoping for a few more come Christmas, I know at least one family member still reads the blog so I hope you’re paying attention!) and if ‘My Murderous Childhood’ is anything to go by then I can’t see myself stopping anytime soon. This collection has everything that made the previous two essential reading for me, over the top brutal cartoon violence and plenty of laughs (of the slightly sick kind, you’ve got to have a certain sense of humour for this one...)

As the title suggests, the main chunk ‘My Murderous Childhood’ focuses on what the Goon did after leaving the carnival as a young boy. Namely, go straight into town and start taking over Labrazio’s rackets. This isn’t just a tale of how the Goon got started in a life of crime; it’s also the story of how he and Franky first met and it’s very entertaining to see what Franky was like as a young boy considering how we know he turns out! Lonely Street was a much nicer place to live back in the day and by showing us how it used to be, Powell’s stories are starting to become a little more than just disjointed fragments. Something a lot bigger is starting to grow...

The other stories are a mixture of building on the ongoing plot (the Goon versus grave-robbers and hoboes) and one off stories (the Goon versus Fishy Pete’s mother) that are brimming with goodness as far as I’m concerned. Plenty of irreverent humour mixed in with characters that are ready to throw down at the slightest provocation. It’s not all about the violence though, witness the Goon setting Spider’s ex-wife on him (along with at least a thousand of his baby children) as the result of confusion arising over a bad gambling debt...
There is a fine line here that Powell does well to stay balanced upon. Everyone is doing the same things as they were in previous books but luckily the story remains quirky enough to cover up any repetition. I’ll be interested to see if Powell can maintain this over the rest of the series...

‘My Murderous Childhood’ is full of goodness and the promise of more goodness to come. If you haven’t already gathered what a fan I am then I’ll tell you right now that I’m well and truly in for the long haul with this series and if you’re a comic book fan then I reckon you should give this a go too.

Eight and Three Quarters out of Ten