Thursday, August 29, 2013

The Goon in Those That is Damned TPB

Yep. Time for another Good trade.

At this point Labrazio (who can't possibly be Labrazio) has gathered together an all-star team of subordinates who have previously tried to kill Goon.  The harpies, Mr Wicker, and the blinded Zombie Priest are all here, though the last is more entertainment for the others than anything else. 

Their opening attack on Goon kills one of his lackies and severely wounds another.  After exacting a small revenge and hunting down the source who betrayed them to Labrazio (who can't possibly be Labrazio), Goon and Frankie prepare for a larger battle.

There's not a lot of plot development in this trade, but it does have two interesting things relevant to the plot.  First, the opening chapter explains why the town is such a cursed cesspool.  Think Donner Party but worse.  Buzzard learns all of this and relays it to Goon, giving him the option of leaving town to pursue a happy life or stay and fight an unwinnable war.  No surprise which Goon chooses. 

Second, there's a final scene with the mother of all the little zombie babies being carried away from the danger of a fire by someone who refers to her as mother.  Not one of the zombie babies but a full size adult male someone.  Got me who it is.

A large portion of the trade is a collection of short stories about Goon done by other creators.  We have The Fillbach Brothers, Kyle Hotz, Rebecca Sugar, Bob Fingerman, and John Arcudi.  Most of those did the art for their stories, too, but Herb Trimpe did the art for the Arcudi story (a little something for Matthew).  These are all good stories in keeping with the characters of the book but unrelated to the main story.  I particularly like "Dr. Alloy in For the Benefit of Underprivileged Inmates" by Sugar.  Altogether there are 7 short stories in this section, which is nearly half the book.  I would have liked to see a bit more of the main arc of the Goon, but with this good quality work I can't say I was unfairly deprived.

No comments:

Post a Comment