Archer's Goon: Chapters 12 & 13
A LEGO tribute to a fun and original YA novel
Hello! If you’re looking for The Drawing Book’s usual comics, you can find them here.
Welcome to our LEGO re-enactment of Diana Wynne Jones’s awesome and highly original novel Archer’s Goon. My eight-year-old son and I did this a couple of years ago, and luckily, we took some photos! I’ve included some excerpts from the text, so you can see what our LEGO scenes are meant to be portraying.
If you haven’t read the story, none of this will make much sense. But, if you haven’t read the story, you shouldn’t be here anyway - you should be heading to your local bookstore/library to get a copy of Archer’s Goon!
If you want to start at the beginning, here’s where you can find all the chapters.
Or, read on!
Chapter 12
The bus took them right to the other end of town - the part on the map at school that had been marked “Industry” - and dropped them at the end of a row of little red houses that were all joined together.
Beyond that the town just petered out into big khaki-coloured sheds that looked like factories, although they did not seem to be working, or wide fields mostly made of weeds and half bricks.
…
The Goon bent down to a manhole cover in the road at their feet. He hooked his large fingers in it somehow, and somehow he tore it up, leaving a square dark hole with an iron ladder leading down into it. “Down here,” he said. “As good as any.”
“Or as bad,” Quentin agreed. “Lead on then.”
The Goon swung himself into the hole and went swarming down the ladder as easily as a baboon down a tree…
Chapter 13
Awful… turned round and called, “It’s not a guard! It’s Ginger Hind!”
“I know,” said Howard. And he called through the grating to Ginger, “Did Shine tell you we were here?”
To his disappointment Ginger Hind said, “Don’t be daft! How could she? Followed the bus on my own feet, didn’t I?… Saw you go down that hole. It stood to reason it was a sewer and came out here, so I came over here and listened till I heard you. What are you doing down there?”
Howard took a risk and said, “Erskine locked us up.”
“Hathaway, send a bus!” (The Goon is chasing Howard in a digger, which doesn’t really happen, but I guess we got a little mixed up with the digger ride in the next chapter.)
It was fun building Zed Alley to look like a “Z.” It was also fun to think that Zed Alley was close to the “Mitre Club,” which we imagined was full of wild partying - so we added that in, as well. We imagined the Mitre Club in the basement of Shine’s den of crime!
Howard paused to listen at the entrance to Zed Alley. It would be a nightmare to meet Erskine coming up it.
(That’s Torquil with crozier and megaphone at the door of the club!)
“Mom,” [Howard] said, while she was unlocking the car, “Where would you live if you lived in the future?”
”Goodness knows,” said Catriona. She got in behind the wheel. Howard heard her say, above the noise of the starter, “In some house that hasn’t been built yet, I suppose.”Light dawned on Howard. Venturus farmed education. He turned slowly to look across the forecourt to where the line of big yellow diggers stood in front of a building made mostly of steel girders and scaffolding. There was now a noticeable doorway in the middle, made of concrete blocks. It all fitted. It fitted with the way Shine, Torquil, Hathaway, and Archer all lived so close together. It fitted with the inklings in Howard’s head.
To be continued…