May 15, 2023

What’s up, you mendicants?

Has anyone seen any cheese dip?

What’s better than eating? Could it be a fray? Where did I put my sword?

Yes, this is all just a way of saying that this special edition of EYG Comic Cavalcade will be focused around everybody’s favorite wandering barbarian, Groo!

I was introduced to Groo back when I was a young kid when Groo got his own Marvel comic book series (under the Marvel-Epic line). I know Groo debuted in the pages of Mad Magazine, but I did not read Mad regularly. I happened to get the first issue of Groo and just loved it. I have been a fan of Groo ever since.

Groo has recently been in a mini series with Tarzan. That was fun. I have seen an upcoming new series from Dark Horse too. It was called Groo in the Wild and I added that to my pull list.

But I found out that there were some other Groo books from Dark Horse and I went to eBay and found the series Groo: Friends and Foes.

EYG Hall of Famer Sergio Aragonés created Groo and does the art while Mark Evanier is listed as Wordsmith.

Groo: Friends and Foes #1-12.

This series has a bunch of fraying, eating, boats sinking, towns burning and unlimited innocent bystanders being doomed.

Each issue featured the return of one (or more) character(s) from Groo’s universe. This included the Minstrel, Grooella, Taranto, Pal ‘n Drumm, Weaver & Scribe, Chakaal, The Sage, Arcadia the hero, Arba & Dakarba, Captain Ahax, and Granny Groo.

There was also an ongoing storyline throughout the 12-issues that featured a little girl named Kayli (who Groo constantly called a little boy) who was looking for her long long father, who had been taken away to war. It wasn’t the greatest secret of what character would turn out to be Kayli’s father. Still, it was a fun running gag.

And running gags are what Groo is made of. Everything from people seeing Groo arrive and knew that they were doomed to running away from him to even going as far as to do terrible things to themselves because it would clearly be better if they do it to themselves instead of having it happen by Groo.

Groo continues to be a ton of fun and filled with humor. I would love to see an animated film with the character of Groo in the lead, but, until that happens, I’ll keep enjoying these Dark Horse books.