3 out of 5

Starting ‘The Goon Year,’ when Powell would keep a monthly schedule for the book.  Or – the ‘average year,’ as I’d refer to it.

There’s not really a strong story arc here, but I’ll be reviewing the single issues (which I started collecting w/ #19) as they’re collected into the trades, so bear with me.  Loosely, these five books cover the Zombie Priest’s continual loss of power – his boss stops by to keep him in check – and some monster version of Labrazio installed as the villain-in-charge in his stead.  While we still get flashes of the ol’ Goon humor – book 19 has a nice randomness to it, even though this makes its attempts at narrative incredibly disjointed, and book 20 comes close to that classic Powell offhandedly crass charm – the series is more majorly turning toward ‘shaking things up.’  Mr. Wicker comes back, which closes that gap even more, making the ‘Chinatown’ GN something that happened yesterday instead of this serious aside in the Gooniverse.

(It also makes the structure of that book even weaker, as it makes the past / present structure of the tale somewhat pointless: the flashback could’ve been told on its own more effectively, and the present tale could’ve been shifted to the ongoing, since the characters are appearing here now anyway…  …this is ignoring the story parallels, of course, and I ALREADY REVIEWED CHINATOWN, but the parallels weren’t all that grand that the book would suffer by separating the halves…)

Art-wise, the panels are often lacking the energy that came earlier in the book (Powell admits to cutting corners in the letter pages to make the monthly deadlines), but with Dave Stewart stepping in to assist with colors on ish #20, the book takes on a much more pleasingly streamlined, strong look to it.

And that’s about it.  What once was this cutting edge of creativity is now simply amusing, with moments that make you remember what once was (and perhaps trick you into thinking that that’s what you’re reading… ‘fan blindness,’ I’ll call it.).  The backmatter is pretty chuckle-worthy, though, as mentioned in my ‘Satan’s Sodomy Baby’ review, we’re very clearly getting more and more of Eric as entertainer as much as comic-book-maker, and Powell forever has that habit of doing art, art, art, talking head page structures, so it often feels like you can zip through your 2.99 book in five minutes.  Which is something of an argument for the trades for this series, since they’re close enough to cover price.