Comic book review: The Goon-Occasion of Revenge #1- Smashing through the hive of conformity

Writer: Eric Powell
Artist: Eric Powell
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 23rd July 2014


This book is worth purchasing just for the first quarter of insightful writing from Eric Powell. This is where he details the true nature of a sociopath, and how many a man has wasted his life obsessing over a pretty girl who couldn’t care less whether he lives or dies. Seriously, they should teach that lesson to every young boy at school. It sure would save a lot of pain down the road.

I’m not joking. They should teach young boys and girls that some people they will meet in their lives will never care, because they cannot care. These people are quite simply not programmed like the rest of humanity. They are sociopaths, and if they’re not busy tormenting and using people up on a personal level they’ll do it on a professional level instead. It’s not a particularly original or revelatory thing for me to say, but a sociopath is the ideal politician, as lies are easy, as long as they serve their own selfish pursuits, and if innocent people have to die, well then they couldn’t care less. This book is about a pretty female sociopath, but what about the older and uglier female sociopath? Two words-

Hillary Clinton.

If America votes for that sociopath then the country really is irreparably broken, but back to the review.

There’s more to the book than the largely understood revelation that pretty young girls can kill men as easily as snapping their fingers. There is the usual Goon wackiness to enjoy as well. This book features a turd in a pint glass, but there’s more.

The book has a sub-plot about a girl who wins the respect of the Goon, earning it rather than relying on her beauty. There are some intriguing villains and there’s also a meditation on staying still for too long as well. Plant roots and you die. I live in the suburbs, so I know what he’s saying here.

This book begins a four-issue arc, and that makes me feel very happy. I always get something out of Eric Powell, his art as well as his writing. Here’s a quick example. Near the end of this book the Goon goes up to a lady drinking alone at the bar. It is the same lady he rejected earlier in the book, rejecting her because she was using her looks to impress and torment men. In the meantime she interjected herself into a fight, helping the Goon in the process. That won his respect. Now he is buying her a drink, not because of her looks, but because she deserves one. That’s the story, but there is a panel that says so much more than that. One panel of the girl looking at the Goon with a genuine look, a look that reveals everything about her, everything she was hiding behind drunken bravado and the flaunting of her looks. One panel. It’s perfect.

There’s something about the writing of Eric Powell that marks him out from the rest of the crowd. There’s an independent spirit about it, a combination of humour, pathos, intelligence and resilience. You get a real sense of the man through his writing, and although I know nothing about the guy I like what I read. He seems untainted by the politically correct mind control systems that have polluted so many of the comic book writers that I read today.

Sometimes I read all of these superhero comics and it’s hard to tell who has written what. They all have the same voice, the same jokes, and the same socio-political agendas. It’s like reading comic books designed by the bloody feminist liberal borg. This is not the case with Eric Powell. You read his stuff and you know it’s him. I like that. I admire that. What you get from him is an independent spirit happily separated from the self-satisfied hive-mind of conformity that now plagues mainstream comic books. I love it. Long may it continue.
Rating: 9/10