OCTOBER MONSTER SKETCH #22

To commemorate my favorite month (October) and my favorite holiday (Halloween), I'm doing a monster sketch per day.

For today's monster, I chose the original Goon, from E.C. Segar's classic comic strip, "Thimble Theatre"--better known as the home strip of Popeye. More people remember Alice the Goon, a domesticated, dressed-up version of her species, seen later in the comic. But in its first appearance, the Goon was a savage henchman to Popeye's great enemy, The Sea Hag. Perhaps to modern eyes that have "seen everything" where monsters are concerned, the Goon might appear silly looking, and not scary at all. But in 1933, there was a nation-wide uproar from concerned parents who claimed their comic-reading children were having nightmares from seeing the hideous Goon. Competing with the Universal horror movie monsters of the same era, that made the Goon a terror of the highest pedigree.