52 Problems But A Goon Ain’t One: The Goon #39 Review

The Goon #39 makes a savage mockery of just about every major superhero comic, and superhero comic creator, of the past five years. It skewers everything from DC Comics’s New 52, to Geoff Johns’s Blackest Night arc in Green Lantern, to Spider-Man’s constant sad-sack internal monologues, and it kicks the shit out of every major – and minor – comics artist that had put pencil to paper (or, apparently, mouse to pixel) since 1986. In short, it denigrates every trope of the superhero comics that I have loved since I was five years old.

And it is fucking awesome.

You might notice that this review doesn’t contain a spoiler warning. That’s because there is no story here to ruin. This is one of writer / artist Eric Powell’s one-off issues that serves no story nor history of The Goon. It is simply a brutal takedown of superhero universe reboots and the tricks that the Big Two Publishers use to whip fanboys like me into a frenzy, and to sleaze mainstream media interest in comics (Example: The Goon is killed, and brought back to like, three times in this issue. On one page. Your move, Matt Fraction).