The Groo Review

Vital Statistics
Author: Mark Evanier & Sergio Aragones
Artist: Sergio Aragones
ISBN 10: various
ISBN 13: various

I first came across the series by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier as a new comic fan aged 14. It was one of the two regular comics I read (and even subscribed to at one stage) each month back in the mid-eighties. The other comic I read was also from Marvel, a story that focused on the Vietnam War, The Nam. Looking back, these two comics were a strange combination and I think they somehow balanced out two interests of mine that I can clarify a little more these days.

One side of me seeks to find the humanity in extreme situations such as war, to try to understand why and how such events of sweeping tragedy happen. The other side of my brain finds the concept of a brainless barbarian attacking everything in sight seriously funny.

A MAD fan from a young age I was immediately attracted to Groo because of Aragones’ art. And it is Groo not MAD magazine that has lasted the distance for me. At 10 I found the caricatures and vomit cartoons in MAD very funny but now I find it all simply crass and its not something I have encouraged my eight year old son to read. I’m sure he will find it eventually but I wonder if it will appeal (he’s not a fan of gross humor, more slapstick like the The Muppets). However I have a few issues of Groo at home and he has poured through them laughing at the bits he reads.

I read the volume Groo Inferno a few days ago. It contains issues 33-36 of the old Marvel series and is printed on a heavy matte paper stock which tends to serve comics from this period better than the glossy stock most reprints are produced on today. I find the new reprints do strange things to the colours and give them a garish appearance.  But this is a personal preference. I know I have an old trade print of Dark Phoenix Rising on matte stock and prefer it infinitely more than the latest reprint on glossy stock, though the latter may outlast my copy over time.

Anyway this Groo volume contains 4 issues, one stand alone story and a three part story arc entitled The Amulet, one of the funnier Groo stories I remember. Simply seeing Groo as a fish is worth hunting down the volume for. Aragones’ character design is deceptively fine. You know you are onto a great design if you can transfer your main character into no more than a head with fins and readers still understand the visual cues necessary to convey the story. And make them laugh…

The Groo stories always start the same way, a page of scene setting panels then a two page splash with a character known as Minstrel singing a song that not only rhymes but also gives you some deeper feeling for what the story is about and also manages to remind you how truly stupid and destructive Groo is. As Groo himself says in this volume, “Every time I do something stupid you are always singing about it. And it seems like you are ALWAYS singing!”

From my 1980′s -induced memory I can recall that the author’s had some sort of easter egg for readers to find in the opening splash pages, but at time of writing I can’t remember what exactly that was. Then the story progresses, often in this pattern:

• Some poor townspeople say how terrible things are
• They feel better because at least Groo isn’t there
• Groo turns up.
• Groo tries to make things better but ends up making things worse
• Minstrel sings about the moral of the story

The great thing about the Groo stories is that they often do have a moral, a reason for telling the story. Its not all just comedic violence and droll jokes. While not as serious as a comic like The Nam, which endeavoured to tell experiences of war as accurately as a mainstream comic could in that era, Groo covers similar issues of humanity in an allegorical way. A humorous fable replete with a specific moral spelled out at the end.

For emerging readers the drawings are a large part of Groo’s appeal though the clever wordplay by Evanier is equally rewarding for those who venture to read the simple text balloons. Aragones’ drawing ability is highly detailed and dynamic and you get the feeling he could tell the story without words (as he did with much of his MAD work). There is so much happening in even the smallest of panels and background characters are often quite expressive. Wordsmith Mark Evanier, a veteran writer of numerous TV cartoon shows, co-writes with Aragones’ and the script is very funny yet utilises a mostly simple vocabulary ensuring there is something for both emerging and fluent readers of all ages.

There is some very minor violence: e.g. blood drips (not spurts) & very occasional cut off bits as people fight each other with swords. There are female characters with anatomically impossible figures but the characters are strong and there is no sexual innuendo.

Even so these points may dissuade some from recommending the titles to ages under 10. My library had Groo in their Young Adult Fiction section which I think  is over-kill.  Its a great title for Junior Readers.