Before I read The Goon: Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker I’d heard of Eric Powell’s creation. I’d even picked up an issue and dismissed it (probably more for the reason that it was a mid-book in an arc and I was reading way too many comics at the time).

As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one to make that mistake. From its inception in 1999, The Goon has -- from time to time -- been dismissed by readers and retailers. Well people, it’s time to put a halt to that.

Eric Powell writes and draws the bi-monthly comic book, but he infuses it with passion and a keen eye for characters that aren’t cut from traditional hero material. Powell’s writing is spare and lean, appearing over his bold, brash art only when necessary. It’s hard to say if Powell is a better writer or a better artist. I’d say that he’s a lot like Frank Miller when Miller was writing and drawing Sin City. Powell’s as easily at home in his Depression-era metropolis as Miller ever was on the grimy streets of Sin City.

After runs at Avatar Press and Albatross Exploding Funny Books (Powell’s independent comics publishing venture), The Goon found a home at Dark Horse Comics. Six graphic novels plus one hardcover have been published previously. Powell has also worked on comics for DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

The Goon: Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker is an original graphic novel that hasn’t been gathered up from the bi-monthly issues. Dark Horse Comics backed Powell’s desire to tell one of the most important stories in the Goon’s history and release it as a hardcover.

The book is a sheer delight from cover to cover. I was immersed in the characters from the beginning. Powell tells two stories in the graphic novel: one from the Goon’s past and the other in the present. Using sepia tones to separate the pages recounting the past was simply brilliant. The change is subtle and doesn’t jar the reader. I was pulled through the stories effortlessly, turning pages as the two stories kept dovetailing back into each other.

In the pages Powell pulls from the Goon’s past, we see him as a wide-eyed child. His mother was the circus strongwoman, but she had definite ideas about her son growing up to be a good man. Longtime readers know that the Goon’s mother was killed by Labrazio, a gangster that everyone in town seemed to owe.

Labrazio kept all the information about those debts in a book. After his mother was killed and Labrazio talked about how stupid she was, the Goon lost control and killed the gangster. The Goon decided not to tell anyone. Instead, he passed himself off as Labrazio’s chief enforcer and basically took over the whole crime syndicate.

With a background like this, the Goon doesn’t come across as heroic. He’s definitely an anti-hero. But he has heroic tendency. Powell’s world is peopled by off-beat supernatural creatures as well. You’ll find zombies, skunk-apes, cannibalistic hoboes, robots, vampires, and werewolves in the pages of this comic book, and you’ll probably be just as fascinated by the mythology and stories as I became.