Archer's Goon: A LEGO tribute to an awesome story
A literary explosion!
I usually share newsletters about comics and life in my hometown of Calgary. But over the next couple of weeks, I’m doing something different.
I’m a big fan of YA Fiction, and one of my favourite authors is the wonderful Diana Wynne Jones. Over the past few months, I’ve been listening with delight to a new podcast called Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, in which authors Emily Tesh and Rebecca Fraimow discuss DWJ’s incredible novels. Well, this past weekend, they discussed my favourite one: Archer’s Goon. It just happens that I wrote a… well, let’s call it a LEGO-inspired tribute to Archer’s Goon, a couple of years ago. I never published it here, because this Substack is about comics, not about an amazing-but-kind-of-obscure children’s book from the 1980s!
But I’ll never have a better opportunity. It’s time! So, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting my Archer’s Goon pieces, one every day. (I hope!) I’m not sure if that will leave me time to publish my usual comics newsletter next Sunday - we’ll see how that goes. If you DON’T want daily newsletters showing up over the next couple of weeks, feel free to mute, or sign off, or unsubscribe, or whatever works - but bear with me. Things will get back to normal soon!
Here’s the introduction I wrote a couple of years ago.
Archer’s Goon
I’ve loved Young Adult Fiction and children’s/teen books in general, for many years (and I’ve even written a little bit about this subject - in this old blog, for example). Diana Wynne Jones has written some of the best YA books out there. You may have heard of her book “Howl’s Moving Castle,” which was made into a movie by Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (the movie is quite different than the book). But most of her work is not as well-known as it should be, so I haven’t had too many people to share these books with.
Around 2022, I thought I’d try reading one of her books to my kids. I picked “Archer’s Goon,” which was nominated for the 1985 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It’s one of her weirdest, most original books (and that’s saying something).
My older son wasn’t interested. But my younger son, who was eight at the time, was mesmerized. I honestly hadn’t expected him to like it much - it’s a long, complicated chapter book, aimed more at a teenage (or adult!) audience. To my delight and gratification, it blew his mind.
When we finished reading the book, he sat down and drew this picture to show how he felt. It was a literary explosion! It was the first time he’d encountered a book that could do what this book did for him: it took him on a delightful, suspenseful journey along an unpredictable and hilarious path of discovery. It astonished him as new surprises kept coming up, and it provided him with a deep satisfaction as all the pieces fell into place. This picture pretty much sums up what Diana Wynne Jones’s books do for me, too.
So, what did we do? We did what any eight-year-old-and-mother team would do: we recreated highlights from the book, with LEGO. It took weeks. It was so much fun. I was obsessed.
So, that should really be the end of the story. Because, honestly, who could we possibly share this with? How many people have heard of Diana Wynne Jones (not enough!) and how many have read “Archer’s Goon?”
We know there aren’t many of you, but whoever you are, if you are one of those rare readers who know and love this book: this is for you.
We built enough Lego, and we took enough photos, to fill ten short newsletters that take you on a journey through the book. This isn’t a literary analysis, it’s just photos of our LEGO versions, with accompanying quotes to explain what we were trying to re-create. If you haven’t read the book, it won’t make much sense.
If this isn’t your thing, feel free to mute! But if you come along for the ride, I’ll be so glad to have you here!
Note: if you HAVEN’T read the book, and you think you might (really, you should), you probably shouldn’t look at our LEGO version, because it’s filled with spoilers. Beware!