![]() It would give them an opportunity to develop more complex stories something more epic. I thought a natural evolution (when Evanier and Aragonés were tired of coming up with a new preposterous plot each issue) would be to introduce longer storylines. In a particularly horrendously printed issue, there’s a call-out to a much-loved Prince Valiant storyline. It’s great!Įvanier explains that every issue of Groo (since #4) has had a secret message somewhere. The book uses Groo’s stupidity to huge advantage: Above we have people trying to explain to him the concept of “a play”, to little success. I love Aragonés’ depiction of a glamorous barbarian. The enthusiasm the creators have for Groo is contagious. It’s this kind of thing that makes casual fans into rabid fans: The feeling that the creators are putting more into the book than what is, strictly speaking, required. And always concrete, well-drawn surroundings.Īnd then there’s the letters pages: Evanier responds to the missives with a set of running gags. I love how Aragonés do these: Very clear storytelling, but very dynamic, with shifting angles and emphasis. This leaves even less room to develop a story, making everything feel even slighter than usual.įor a comic about a guy killing people in fights, there’s a lot of scenes of Groo and company standing around talking (very amusingly). One issue starts where the previous one left off, but that’s it.Ī few issues have a shorter main story (they’re usually 22 pages long) and a backup feature. There’s next to no continuity (at least in the issues I’ve read so far). (And it turns out that the slaves are just as bad as the slavers, so…) Faced with a group of slavers, Groo wants to do the right thing and help them, but 1) he’s a moron, and 2) without much of a moral spine, so it all grows kinda muddled. The comic tries to do some character development. After reading one issue, I find it difficult not to reach for the next one. That could mean a very, very repetetive reading experience, but instead (in the better issues) it leads to a certain narrative rhythm that’s rather pleasing. The basic setup of a Groo story is that he arrives somewhere, misunderstands everything, and then fucks everything up for everybody, including himself. There’s a steady patter of these things that have an accumulative effect, and it gets rather irresistible after a while. ![]() The wordplay is stupid sure, but it’s fun. It also gets funnier and sillier every time over the first dozen issues, I think. I have no idea whether they got notes from the Marvel editors or not, but the violence gets more goofy after the first handful of issues. I think they decided “no”, because they rather cut back on that swiftly. ![]() But is submerging a city in lava, killing everybody, really fun? Really? The book continues to vacillate in just how violent it’s going to be: I mean, it’s about a guy who goes around killing people (mostly by mistake), so that there’s going to be a lot of death is a given. Oh, yeah, I had almost forgotten how annoying those rhymes were… The plot (even as a Groo comic goes) doesn’t make much sense, and the gags feel underdeveloped.īut we do get an amusing text page from Evanier. The first issue, unfortunately, feels a bit half-baked. The final Pacific issues were printed on white “Baxter” paper, and Aragonés’ artwork really shone there. Unfortunately, Epic printed Groo on toilet paper using what I can only assume is a carved potato printing plant, so er some details are lost. There was a steady improvement, though, so perhaps the Epic issues will be where they find the right balance?Įvery issue starts off with a two-page spread like this, most of them (at least so far) as insanely detailed like this. It was an improvement, but the first few issues had problems with tone. In the first issues, the gag is that Groo is a raging asshole, and then they sweeten the deal by making Groo a total moron instead. I have read Groo before (and before), and I… I’m not really a fan. The other reason is that, of course, the Groo comics are about 13% of Epic’s output (if we’re counting issues, not story pages), so I thought it was going to take weeks and months to get through it all. By the time I got the comics, I was reading the 1989 books, and I thought I may as well just do them at the end instead. (I hope your leg is better!) So I waited, and then I re-bought the set from somebody else. If blog is supposed to be a chronological reading of everything published by Epic Comics, then why am I reading Groo after all the other books? Because I bought the set of comics from somebody on ebay who then said “I broke my leg, could you wait a bit?” and then ghosted me. Sergio Aragonés Groo the Wanderer (1985) #1-120īy Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth
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