Comics
[Comic Review] “The Goon Once Upon A Hard Time” #2
Reviewed by Brady Steele. This month’s installment of The Goon: Once Upon A Hard Time #2 is aptly titled “A Man Turned Animal”. Readers get to see how truly lost and off the rails a man like The Goon can get when he’s lost hope. More poor choices for our would-be protector lead to some truly ghastly decisions for all to horrify at.
WRITTEN BY: Eric Powell
ART BY: Eric Powell
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics
PRICE: $3.50
RELEASE: 25 March 2015
Defying expectations once again, creator Eric Powell gives readers a literary history lesson in this issue. A couple of heavy hitters are coming to take out The Goon as retaliation for him killing the wrong guy last month. Having been tipped off as to when and where these would-be killers are arriving, The Goon decides to handle the situation personally.
What better way to kill time then by grabbing a six-pack and classic H.G. Wells’s novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau. What unfolds is an examination of what makes a man or an animal. As anyone who has ever read a novel, you can relate to how reading a novel can affect your headspace. Depending on your mood, a good book can really influence your way of thinking. The Goon is a million miles away from a good mood nowadays so this story only stokes the fire and anger inside him. The results are genuinely grizzly and cold.
Reason and understanding has left our capped hero. His moves are now more primal and vicious than ever before. Perhaps this is what The Goon has to do to prevail. It clearly won’t be pretty but as long as he wins, that’s what matters, right? I miss the funny and wacky moments that popped up in this series. Grim and gritty was something I would never use to describe The Goon before this arc. It’s dark and good but I need some sliver of hope in there somewhere. Hopefully there’s some light left buried deep in there somewhere down the line.
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Mr. Steele enjoys all things comics and imagination-based. Using his lifetime of comic-fu-dom for good, he imparts his knowledge for the universe to enjoy and for you, dear readers, to pass it on.
Twitter: @mrbradysteele
IDW Dark and Paramount recently joined forces to launch limited comic book tales set in the worlds of Smile and A Quiet Place, and we’ve learned today that they’ll continue hanging around in those franchise universes with two brand new limited series tales.
Entertainment Weekly has exclusively revealed this afternoon that IDW Dark’s Any Given Smile debuts in September, while A Quiet Place: Rising Tides arrives in November.
First up, from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Pablo Collar, Any Given Smile puts a football-themed twist on Parker Finn’s successful Smile movie franchise.
The five-part limited series is “set in January 1995, during the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The rising superstar of the Sharks, backup quarterback Dupree, is feeling the pressure from his teammates, the fans, and also the city’s gambling underworld, to whom he owes a considerable debt. Meanwhile, a sports journalist investigates a string of suicides that may be connected to the big game. At the very least, they are connected to a sinister entity that preys on the minds of its victims.”
From writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides will also be a five-issue limited story. The comic book tale “brings the creatures to the Florida Keys, where a father-daughter duo attempt to survive on water in a houseboat.”
EW further details, “This tense family reunion coincides with the arrival of the vicious creatures that hunt through sound. Grace and her dad find safety on the open ocean, but she’ll have to make landfall sooner or later; the father’s oxygen tank and their supplies are running low, while a hurricane swiftly approaches.”
Learn more about both comic books over on Entertainment Weekly.
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