The Corner Box S1E17 - Sergio Aragones' Groo the Wanderer and the Dream Team

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:31] David Hedgecock: “A hero may be grand or small - but Groo is a Neanderthal. His fame has spread from sea to distant sea. This much is undeniable - He's totally reliable if you have need of some catastrophe. Give him a vase to polish it - in seconds, he'll demolish it - and maybe wreck your home before he's through. Give him the opportunity - to slay your whole community. There's no one in the world who’s quite like Groo.” This is from The Minstrel, Groo the Wanderer number one, volume two, from the Epic Comic run. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. Hi, I'm David, with me, as always,

[01:14] John Barber: John Barber. Glad to be here.

[01:16] David: Yeah, we're back. John had a great idea for a topic, which I am totally into. We're talking about Groo the Wanderer today. For me, Groo the Wanderer is a lifetime reading habit. I guess, my first encounter with Groo was with the Epic issue number one. Found it on a liquor store spinner rack, and around the same time was when Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew number four came out. They were timed very closely, at least in my mind, they were, and so around that time, Groo one showed up and it was one of the best things. It was so radically different from anything else that I was reading at the time, and just funny and full of humor, and I just loved it right from the start. I think I literally have every single issue of Groo that's ever been published, probably multiple copies of every single issue of Groo that's ever been published. Glad we're talking about this one today.

[02:22] John: I'm excited. I have a vague idea of Groo’s 40 years old and still comes out with almost exactly the same creative team for almost all the run, but yeah, you really took it and ran with it, because I actually didn't realize how big Groo was for you. I think I encountered it at roughly the same time, I think, and the same way. This had to have been during a period when I was going to comic bookstores, I think, but I still remember going to 7/11 and picking up comics off the spinner rack there. For some reason, most of my memories of Groo are picking them up there, but this is definitely one of those things where I can't even track my comic buying habits in those days. I was thinking about it, and I was like, “I was reading all the superhero stuff. Why was I reading Groo?” and I was like, “no, wait. I was also reading Get Along Gang, and I was reading anything.” I was reading all sorts of stuff. So, I guess it was just part of the mix of stuff. Was that your first encounter with Sergio Aragonés?

[03:22] David: Yeah, I had no idea. I was still at a phase, I was young enough that I didn't really understand quite yet that different people were working on specific things or that there were certain artists attached to certain things, and didn't quite fully understand that, but he certainly was part of that development phase of learning what comic books were and how they were made, and the fact that different people, certain people make them and that I prefer the work of certain people over other people.

[03:55] John: Yeah, I wasn't a Mad Magazine reader, so even if you didn't know who Aragonés was, you’d probably recognize him if you knew the stuff from Mad, which I didn't, so I certainly didn't know DC horror comic interstitials from the 70s.

[04:13] David: Yeah, I had zero exposure to that stuff. I did read Mad Magazine around that time, and honestly, I don't think I actually put together the fact that it was the same guy doing those Mad Magazine in-betweens that Sergio was doing. I don't think I actually put that together for quite some time. In fact, I just assumed for a long time that all the Mad Magazine stuff was done by a variety of different artists. I didn't even realize it was the same guy doing all the margins that whole time, because who could possibly be doing a monthly comic book for 10 years without missing a deadline, and be doing all of the physical comedy margins in Mad Magazine at the same time, plus all the other stuff that Sergio Aragonés was doing at this time? It's not possible, so it didn't even cross my mind that it could possibly be the same guy, because no human being can put out that much content, and yet, here we are, the dude is definitely doing all of it. It’s incredible.

[05:22] John: Should you explain what Groo is in a fundamental sense? If you’re listening to this, you have Wikipedia.

[05:33] David: Don't tell them that because that's where I got all the notes that I have for this podcast. If they go to Wikipedia, they're going to be peeking behind the curtain. They'll see how all the magic is made.

[05:45] John: There's no such thing as Wikipedia.

[05:47] David: Yes. Groo came about around the time when Conan the Barbarian movies were really super popular. I don't know if there was an influence there or if Aragonés was into Conan, or whatever, but it was a spoof of that. It was Conan, but not the smart version of Conan. It's interesting that when the first couple of appearances of Groo, it's probably because Mark Evanier, who was the writer, isn't fully involved yet in the very, very early phases of it, Groo’s not the incompetent dunce that he becomes pretty quickly once we get into the Pacific run, but doesn’t totally start out that way. He’s certainly not the brightest bulb in the batch, but he's not the dimmest, and that's where we ended up. So, Groo is a dim barbarian who wanders the countryside, and he’s a force of nature. Things happen around him. Chaos tends to follow his trail, and there are various schemers and people trying to do various bad, sometimes good, machinations that don't pan out because of Groo, but not because Groo’s directly aware of his influence on anything whatsoever. So, it's just really played for comedy, a lot of physical comedy, and that's it. That's my take on it. How do you describe it, John?

[07:22] John: Yeah, no, it's good. Funnily enough, this is the thing I got wrong. I was convinced until earlier today that first Groo’s story was in Starslayer number five, which I have. I’ve got a full run of Starslayer. I bought that a couple years ago. Big Starslayer fan. The first appearance of the Rocketeer was Starslayer number two, and then the first Grimjack was also in Starslayer, and I thought Groo was also there. So, earlier today, I reread that story, and I've read the most recent issue of Groo. I was going to ask you, I read the beginning and the end. Was any of the middle stuff any good? I found out there was Destroyer Doc. I was actually looking online and then I was like, “Oh, I think I knew that.” I don't think I've ever read that story, or maybe I read it in a reprint or something. I don't remember that all, but yeah, reading the second story, which was the first one that Mark Evanier came on to do, he's credited as translator, which, a long-running joke for a while was that Sergio Aragonés didn't speak English, which he does.

[08:20] David: Yeah, or spoken poorly, but certainly not true.

[08:24] John: That first issue reminds me of reading the very first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something, where it's the same guy, he looks a little different. You can see how it refined over time. Not unrecognizable by any means. A little different, but the angle on the story is definitely, it feels more like this is just barbarian comics joke. “Here's a gag you can do about a barbarian. He goes into town, he just wants money, and he gets in over his head,” and it shifts later on, where, I don't think later on, any of those stories or Conan parodies could be construed as that. The same way Ninja Turtles, from issue two on are no longer Daredevil and X Men Verity. They're just those characters from that. I don't know how long it shifted over. I think it feels more of a soft transition, where it's probably poking fun at some of the archetypes, but 40 years into the series, it’s really just poking into its own world or poking around the stuff that it's constructed, I think.

[09:33] David: Yeah, no, I think you're right. It's not really trying to spoof Conan. It's just its own thing. I think maybe, it's got the influence of the Conan mythos or that style of barbarian savage character.

[09:49] John: In 1982, it was, I think, much more prevalent, that there was just a bunch of stuff like Conan. Cerebus was a straight up Conan parody, and directly parodying Barry Windsor Smith, and this wasn’t. This is Sergio Aragonés drawing it like Sergio Aragonés.

[10:06] David: Yeah, and the stories aren't working off of any existing stories. They're just doing their own thing right from the start, I think. So, maybe inspiration or influence is probably a better way to categorize, well, all of it, but certainly the early stuff. Yeah, I have a copy of Destroyer Duck, and I wanted to read it, but it’s slab, so I couldn’t, but I did read the first issue from Pacific Comic, Groo number one, volume one. It holds up incredibly well.

[10:43] John: That comic, there's a timeless quality to it, because it looks like Sergio Aragonés. It doesn't look like comics around them. It looked as different then from everything else, as it does now from everything else.

[10:56] David: Well, this is one of the things I know you want to talk about. I think it's fascinating to try to explore this. We're 41 years into Groo the Wanderer. Over 200 issues of this book, and it's been almost exactly the same creative team from the very first issue. The only exception being Tom Luth has retired a few years ago, and maybe in the beginning Tom Luth came in a little bit later, but since Starslayer number five, Stan Sakai has been lettering this book, and Mark Evanier has been writing it, and Sergio has been drawing it, and what an incredible run, and I think you had a comparison that I thought was really fascinating, and wow, what if?

[11:38] John: If you could imagine what the date would have been, around 1980 or so, if you were to pick up an issue of Superman, if it was still Siegel and Schuster doing it with just a different colorist. It's after the first Superman movie came out.

[11:58] David: What would that look like all these years later?

[12:02] John: Also, worth throwing out there, Sergio Aragonés was older than those guys were when he created Groo than when they created Superman. You know what I mean? It isn't like “oh, they would have been old men by then.” No, no. They would have been significantly younger than Sergio Aragonés is right now.

[12:17] David: Yeah, Sergio has already got a 10 or 20-year career at the time.

[12:21] John: He was 40 when he created Groo.

[12:23] David: I was shocked when I was doing the research for this. Sergio is 86 years old as of this podcast, and he's still pumping out at least eight issues a year.

[12:37] John: What does he think this is? The presidency? That’s not a job that 86-year-olds do, drawing comic books.

[12:47] David: You're either retired or president when you're that old.

[12:49] John: Yeah, I was going to make a Rolling Stones joke but they're not actually 86 yet. The Rolling Stones are a bit younger than Sergio Aragonés.

[12:57] David: That's shocking. Sergio looks much better than those guys.

[13:05] John: They’re both still doing good stuff, though. To be fair, they’ve both got good stuff coming out.

[13:08] David: Well, I'll go to a Rolling Stone concert tomorrow, and I'm still picking up Groo, but that's fascinating. At 86, this guy, Aragonés has this amazing prolific career. He's done animation, he's done comics, and not just Groo. He created Backlash, he's written The Spirit, he's been all in and around comic books in a variety of different ways, won multiple Eisner’s for just Groo, and then other Eisner’s on top of that, and then you've got Mark Evanier, the writer, the guy's got three Emmy Awards. So, going back as I always do, to pedigree, the pedigree on Groo is so incredible, and I start to really understand why I love this book so much, because the talent behind it is just incredible. These guys are no joke.

[14:04] John: The letterer is okay, too.

[14:08] David: The letterer has won, I don't even know how many Eisner’s. Usagi Yojimbo is at least as important as Groo the Wanderer. What an amazing cast of talent that's on this book, and it just really does go super under-appreciated, even by me, even as I'm going through the book. I've always been a fan. If somebody says, all-time top 10, Groo’s definitely in my top 10 all-time favorite books. It's never been anything less than high quality. There is not a single issue that you can point to with Groo where you're not entertained and having a good time with it.

[14:49] John: I ordered some old comics off of eBay, and one of them was a DC 100-page giant. I guess it was early-70s, maybe, DC had a bunch of comics, whether it be your 100-pages for $1 or something, and this is one that is dedicated to Sergio Aragonés. I forget the title of it, but it's Sergio Aragonés’s House of Fun, or something. I guess, it's a collection of a bunch of stuff that he's done, and that is wild, because I don't know the date that it came out exactly, but I think it's before I was born, let alone before he created Groo, and in my mind, Sergio Aragonés’s Groo the Wanderer, but in the 70s, before any of that he was getting his name on the cover of newsstand DC comics that are just him, in an era when nobody was doing that. You wouldn't buy a Batman and have Neal Adams’ name on it. That's mind-blowing to me, and I'm trying to think of what the equivalent is. It's one of those things of, to me Aerosmith is the band that made Pump and Love in an Elevator, and Janie's Got a Gun, and you have to consciously think that there was 20 years of Aerosmith before that. They were already a huge band before that, or whatever. I mean, Aerosmith is a dumb example, but I can't think of one.

[16:09] David: I think that Aerosmith’s a good example. They had entire careers before we were born, and then they're my favorite band when I'm 14 years old, or whatever it was.

[16:19] John: Yeah, that's the fascinating part. Just to tie this in with previous episodes, Mark Evanier of course, worked on Blackhawk, drawn by Corner Box mascot, Dan Spiegel. Most of Dan Spiegel’s career in Adventure Comics drawing was with Mark Evanier. He was a comedy artist before that, but they did Crossfire, Hollywood Superstars, a bunch of stuff they did, they worked on together, then a huge run on Blackhawk.

[16:50] David: Just points to just how prolific both these guys are.

[16:55] John: Talking about the letterer, it’s Stan Sakai, creator of Usagi Yojimbo. I think I've said this to you, I don't remember, the funny thing about Stan Sakai is that, I think the thing he is worst at, is lettering. Now, he's a great letterer, but I just think he's an even better writer, and even better artist, and an even better painter, and all this stuff. I think, if I were to list all the skills that I know Stan has, he's a super nice guy, too, I would list lettering below all of those, and he's incredibly good, and he wins the Eisner’s almost every year. Eisner’s for lettering, that's its own thing. You can ask letterers what they think about Eisner’s for letterers, but he certainly deserves a lot of Eisner’s. Stan Sakai certainly deserves a lot of Eisner’s. Tom Luth is a terrific colorist. I mean, he's colored all the Usagi stuff, and colored up until he retired. It's this amazing, weird supergroup that all comes together to make Groo. The new colorist who’s name is a lot like the new guy in the Rolling Stones who’s in his 60s. The new colorist, I forget her name, but she's really good, too. It’s great.

[17:57] David: I like her. I think she's great.

[18:02] John: There's something mind-blowing about that. It isn't like the letterer also does cartooning. I'm working on a comic right now with Andrew Griffith, where me, Andrew, our letterer and colorist, who we’re going to make a deal out of it when we announced them, so I'm not going to say who they are, but all of us have professionally written comics. That's funny. That's weird. We all professionally wrote comics and we’re all doing that stuff, but none of us created Usagi Yojimbo. I mean, there's nothing like it. Here's the other thing this guy does.

[18:34] David: None of you've written hundreds of hours of Garfield.

[18:39] John: If you're familiar with Garfield, you probably are more familiar with Mark Evanier’s version of Garfield than you are Jim Davis’s version of Garfield. No disrespect intended to Jim Davis. I don't mean anything bad by that. Weirdly, my son got into this new recent Garfield cartoon. I believe it's French, and it's a CGI cartoon. Abysmal. Absolutely terrible, but Mark Evanier, what I think happens on them is, I think they were all written in French, and I believe Mark Evanier was doing the English dialogue for it. So, I think he’s working with what he has. I could be completely off base, but he's still credited on that. This is from four or five years ago. Meanwhile, my wife got him into the original Garfield cartoon, which she loves much more than I do. So, a lot of Mark Evanier Garfield's been going on lately.

[19:33] David: Well, there's hundreds of hours of it. So, you've got a lot to watch. Evanier also developed the Original Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. I didn't know that.

[19:43] John: There's this guy named Chase that we used to work with, when we were working at another company, we were going to put together an animated series based on the animated D&D cartoon. I'm joking. David knows Chase. I think, eventually it wound up being David Booher who wrote it, but at one point, we were digging around it, and it was like, “Mark Evanier wrote a bunch of these. He developed it.”

[20:04] David: Yeah, any one of these things is an accomplishment, a career-defining accomplishment, winning Emmys, and writing hundreds of hours of a cartoon show, and developing other fan favorite cartoons, and winning Eisner’s for things that aren't Groo. I think you've got it right. It's just the supergroup of talent, just continue to get together and have a good time, and are willing to share it with us.

[20:36] John: So, I think one of the reasons maybe Groo gets overlooked sometimes is the level of consistency that it has. There's a few comics in my life that I feel like I've felt that way about. Groo’s one of them. Usagi Yojimbo is actually another one, and I think I’d probably even throw Hellboy into that category of, I know every issue of this is going to be good, and they're all really good. Maybe if I went back and read all of Groo, I'd be like, “You know what? Issue 63 wasn't that good, but issue 64? That one was a great one.” I don't have that experience with it. I remember them being just very consistent. 40 years into it, one of the deals with Groo is the unfunny-ness of some of the running gags. I don't mean that they drag it down. I mean, the joke is that this is the same running gag that they've been having, where they'll mention cheese dip or the word mendicant, or something like this, where there's no joke attached to it, really at all. That consistency almost plays into that with it, but I've definitely had times where I felt like I don't need to pick up the new issue. If I need to read a Groo, I can just go read a Groo. I've got a bunch of Groo’s, but lately, it really changed around in my head, and as I was going to the college bookstore more often, recently, I started picking up Groo, I started picking up Usagi, both of them had new number ones coming out recently, and those are at the top of my read list when I get home. I just get excited. I'm happy to go live in that world, and I don't know what to make of that.

That's something that I really think about. Both of these things are almost 40 years old. I get why people don't talk about them as much now compared to the new shiny thing that comes out, because the new shiny thing is inherently new and shiny, it's exciting, and you want to talk about the thing, and what is there to say about issue 300 of Groo compared to issue 299? They're both very good. So, I get it, and I don't know, but I really enjoyed the last Groo series. I thought it was terrific. I had a great time reading it. It was just like settling into a comfortable chair and being there with friends that I've known since I was a kid, and it isn't just the nostalgia of it, but it's also, I don't know that there's new readers for it. I don't know if kids are picking up Groo the way we picked up Groo when we were kids.

[23:14] David: That is one of the things about Groo and the legacy around it, is that there was a good long time there where Marvel comics was leaning a little older, so the things that they had were like Transformers, GI Joe, and Groo, in the Epic Comics line. A lot of the Epic Comics were geared towards adult readers, were adult fiction, but Groo is the only Epic Comic that got mass newsstand distribution, and I think Marvel knew what they had. I think Marvel said, “Hey, we've got an all-ages friendly, super consistent, super reliable, high-quality thing that we put out every single month, and it's going to bring in new readers,” and I think Marvel hung its hat on that for 10 years, and I think we could still have that today if we wanted. If a model for mass distribution existed for comic books, I think Groo would still be the thing that would be driving new readers to the comic book shop, and just reading comics in general. I think the packaging of Groo, Dark Horse, I don't want to say they've done a bad job because I certainly don't think that they've done a bad job with it, but I do think that there's more and different ways to package Groo than they bother with or explore, and because they're not actively pushing that repackaging, we don't feel like we get anything new or shiny, but in fact, the opportunity for new and shiny around Groo is still very much in place.

I mean, you think about what Archie has done, historically, with repackaged material where, “you want our chain of digest, you want Archie in a full comic book, you want it in a trade paperback, how do you want Archie? We're going to give it to you, and where can Archie live in a sales format? you can put it on a shelf, you can hang it from the ceiling, you can fly it in the air, whatever you want, Archie is going to produce it in that way, and get it to you,” and Groo as the opportunity to be exactly that if the powers that be wanted to push that narrative. You can repackage Groo in so many different ways, and any kind of format, and it's going to work every time because, not only is it the beauty of the story itself, which is, like you say, this consistently high-quality story. It's also got consistency built into it. If you're a younger reader or older reader, the familiarity is always there for you. Feels like “oh, yeah, mendicant, haha,” you're in on the joke, and it's always there, so you can pick issue 69, issue 83, and issue 12, package them together, and throw them out, and that's a package, and it's going to be fun and interesting, consistent, done on one story right there, boom. Since Dark Horse has got hold of it, they do a little more long-form stories, longer-form format. I think Dark Horse has done, I think they've only done mini-series with Groo since they've been the publisher. It’s 13 mini-series at this point, we're just wrapping up the 13th mini-series. In each one of them's four issues, consistently four issues. That's just another way to take this material and package those longer format stories. You've got everything that you could possibly want baked into those 200-plus issues with that team, and it could be a shiny new thing, and it’s not. Dark Horse as a publisher just doesn't pursue that.

[26:54] John: Yeah, I don't know if the blame would necessarily, or whatever you call it, would fall on Dark Horse, necessarily. I think you're right. I'm sure they want or have thought of it. I know, running into some objections about Usagi Yojimbo, specifically. When IDW got the rights to Usagi Yojimbo, which like this, it had transferred from a few different publishers, and it was at Dark Horse, moved to IDW, and is now back at Dark Horse, and one of the opportunities that some of us thought was going to be there was trying to give Usagi to young readers who would enjoy the samurai stuff the way that I did when I was a kid reading Usagi. I was a little older, I think, when I was reading Usagi, compared to Groo, but not super older. One is, it's less immediately in fashion with the graphic novels and stuff that kids are reading, the mass distribution of comics that kids are reading now. My beloved Babysitter’s Club. Those kinds of graphic novels. The other problem with, I think, both of them is that Groo was aimed at kids at one point. Usagi never really was, but it was never objectionable to kids, I think, except they both have a lot of killing or a lot of implied killing, or in Groo’s case, it's a little vague most of the time, whether or not anybody actually dies, or they just get carted off and they're just off panel.

[28:19] David: He's slicing people's guts open a couple of times. It's never super graphic, but there's the slice and the big drop of blood, or something like that, but it's cartoon violence. It's cartoon humorous. It's like Wile E. Coyote.

[28:34] John: So, you don't do those jokes anymore on cartoons, or very much less of that. I think that problem comes in more with book distribution than it comes with the actual material and the actual kids involved. You know what I mean? Groo is definitely one that, while I was sitting there reading this, I'm like, “Man, I think Jack would love this.” I think my son would love this, just out of the weird stuff that he likes, he would really get into this. There is this part of it, Groo is from an era when kids’ comics were a thing that you were getting away with as a kid. I don't know what the right word to use is, alternative, this wasn't the thing that you were reading in class in school, where the kids’ graphic novels now are. That is the ideal of what they're trying to be is something that you could assign in an English class in school. They're a little more clean and mainstream, maybe. Again, not everything, and I'm making such broad statements of that. That's probably silly to say. 

[29:35] David: I think I get where you're going with that.

[29:37] John: I do think that if Groo had been in the place where Bone was when we talked about Bone, and how that got picked up in Disney Adventures Magazine. If that had been Groo, I could see that completely working. I can see that falling into the same place that Bone was at. I think Bone would be a tougher sell now, for sure, than it was however many years ago.

[30:00] David: 2004. You're almost certainly right, and it's probably the thinking behind it, but for me, looking at the consistency and quality of it, I feel like there's a manga-size, super thick, graphic, cheap, 10 bucks for 300 pages. It doesn't have to be color. It could be black and white. I think that's the beauty of Sergio. The thing that I used to love about Groo comic books was that, pages two and three, it's a masterclass in storytelling, because pages two and three were always this beautiful double-page spread of Groo wandering into wherever he was wandering into, and these double-page spreads are immaculate. There's so much going on in these double-page spreads, and they're just beautiful to behold, and you can take the artwork from those double-page spreads, that are comic-size in the version that I'm exposed to, but you could take any of those double-page spreads and blow them up to giant-sized posters, and they're going to be amazing. It's going to be like Where's Waldo, no matter what size. So, you can blow those things up into giant posters, and it's going to look amazing, and then you can shrink those things down, and it's still going to be really good. You can still make that much smaller than it is, and it’s still going to be legible and clean, and easy to understand, because that's just what Sergio Aragonés does. He's drawing all the Mad margins. He knows how to make stuff really clear and understandable, and I think the artwork, it's just so flexible. It's just got so much. I just feel like exploring different packages with Groo will be really cool, and again, going back to why isn't it being talked about as the hot, fresh new thing? I feel like that's really all that's missing, because it is constantly really good, like you said, and it should be talked about more.

The publishing history, I thought, was interesting. The first appearance of Groo the Wanderer, was over 41 years, so, 1981 is the first appearance. He actually did appear in some college magazine. One of his buddies, actually, it's a drawing of Sergio. He draws himself and on the drawing board that Sergio was sitting at in this illustration is Groo the Wanderer, and then there's another image of Groo in this interview as well. So, one of Sergio’s buddies in some California college interviewed Sergio. That's actually maybe the first appearance, but Destroyer Duck number one is definitely the one that it’s recognized and Starslayer number four, Starslayer number five. Starslayer number five, like you said, is notable in that Mark Evanier and Stan Sakai both joined. Gordon Kent colored a lot of the early stuff before Tom Luth came on. In fact, I think Gordon Kent might have colored all this stuff before Tom Luth came on.

[32:51] John: The Starslayer doesn't actually credit a letterer or a colorist in the comic itself. I'm not saying that's not correct.

[33:00] David: Yeah, I don't remember where I pulled that off of. Somewhere on the internet.

[33:04] John: I genuinely can't tell if that is how Stan Sakai lettered comics in 1982. I'm sure Sergio was more than capable of lettering comics. Not that that's not an easy thing. Just that that he's so good at things.

[33:21] David: Yeah, of course, he can do that, too. Well, we go into 1982, Groo number one, volume one from Pacific Comics launches, they do eight issues, and then Pacific goes out of business. There's a running joke in Groo, for a while, in the letters pages about how they keep taking publishers down, that whoever's polishing Groo eventually is destroyed, much like everything inside the comic.

[33:43] John: That also starts a thing that, like you mentioned with Epic, is that Pacific wasn't as adult-leaning as Epic was. Groo is definitely the outlier. Yeah, it was a lot of Bruce Jones horror and science fiction anthologies. Mike Grell was doing Starslayer. It was a lot of industry veterans doing creator-owned or created or controlled, or ostensibly creator-owned work there. I don’t mean anything by that. I just mean that stuff, Jack Kirby came in and created Captain Victory and Silver Star. I believe there's ads for those in that same issue of Starslayer. They were doing Elric adaptations by P. Craig Russell and Michael Gilbert. That was originally Pacific. Called them ground-level comics at that time, where it was the early direct market, where they weren't undergrounds like you'd had in the 60s and in the late 70s, and the direct market was established, you had all these publishers springing up that were doing things that were designed to be the equivalent of Marvel and DC but just creator-owned, maybe push things a little further. Maybe the costumes are a little more risqué, or something, or the violence is a little harder, or whatever, but into that world is where Groo was hatched. It was never around other things that were aimed at kids. That's one of the weirdest things about it.

[35:03] David: So, Pacific goes down, Epic Comics picks it up. That's Epic/Marvel, I guess, and then there's a 120-issue run. They just do every single month for 10 years. Just there's a new Groo comic book, and me as a kid, I was there every single month to pick that book up, without fail, for pretty much the whole run. I don't think I missed any of it. They did a couple of graphic novels, Life of Groo and Death of Groo, and then in the mid 90s, ‘94, I think the writing on the wall was that Marvel's about to go into bankruptcy, or they had gone into bankruptcy, and nobody was quite sure if Marvel was going to be around, there's all the distributor awards happening, and much like a lot of other creators who had creator-owned work, Sergio took Groo to Image Comics. That did 12-issues there. So, volume 3, 12 issues at Image Comics, and then after a few years, in ‘98, they moved over to Dark Horse, where they've been pretty much the whole time, and Dark Horse, like I said, has just done a series of mini-series the whole time, and To the Wild, is that the latest one?

[36:12] John: I think, Groo in the Wild.

[36:16] David: I think it's the 13th one. So, over 200 issues, some notable appearances: Sage, the wise man who Groo tends to ignore and isn't always the wisest. His first appearance is in the Pacific Groo Volume One, Pacific Number One, and Taronto was one of the long-running foils or foes of Groo, is also in that third Groo number one from Pacific. Chakaal is a female warrior, who Groo is infatuated with from time to time, appears way earlier than I realized. She's also in that Pacific run, Groo number seven of the Pacific run. The Minstrel shows up in Groo number one of the volume two of the Epic/Marvel run, and the Minstrel, I don't know why or how Mark Evanier ever allowed the Minstrel to become a character, because the Minstrel is always rhyming, and I find it so difficult to do that. How do you do natural sounding dialogue, but everything rhymes? I would never ever write a demon. I do not want to have anything to do with that. That seems like the hardest thing to do ever, but for almost that entire 120-issue run, the Minstrel’s opening up the show of almost every issue. Arba and Dakarba, who are the witches, show up in Groo 21. That’s the Epic run, and probably the most important supporting character, you could even say the other main character at this point, is Rufferto, Groo’s dog, who shows up in Groo number 29 of the Epic/Marvel run.

[37:57] John: Didn’t he have a dog before that?

[37:58] David: No, I don't think so. I think Rufferto is the first one, and he proves to be just perfect little foil for Groo.

[38:07] John: Rufferto is probably the most complex character in Groo. He’s got a complicated relationship with Groo. He knows Groo isn't bright, but he's still completely loyal to Groo. He knows Groo gets into trouble, but he still follows what Groo says. It's all consistent.

[38:21] David: He's a perfect dog. He's like every dog you've ever had. Super loyal to you, like “you're an idiot, but I don't care because I just love you.” That's how dogs are. Rufferto is just the perfect dog. I love that Rufferto is also royalty. His previous owner is a king or a queen, or something, and the collar that Rufferto has is diamond-studded. That collar that he's wearing it has the wealth of a nation around his neck, basically. You could literally just retire if you just took that collar and sold it. I love that about that character. So, one of the things that I love about Groo is the hidden messages, as a kid and even as an adult. They hide messages in every single story, and every single issue of Groo, at least the Epic run. I think they've done it in every single issue, and sometimes those messages actually say something, and sometimes literally just “this is the hidden message,” but they find all these interesting and cool ways to hide these little hidden messages in each issue, and it's such a clever and smart trick to do, because the detail that Aragonés puts into every single panel, every single page needs to be appreciated, and the only way to appreciate it is to really look at it, just spend some time looking at it.

So, as a kid, I was spending a lot of time looking for the hidden message, and by happenstance was also spending a lot of time looking at Sergio Aragonés’s art and noticing all these extra little things that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I just did a quick read and wasn’t really looking carefully for the hidden messages. I still think this is such a smart thing to do, especially with Sergio Aragonés. Sergio doesn't have to hide anything. Some artists are like, “let's put a word balloon over that.”

[40:14] John: It’s amazing. That was one of the things that was really blown me away about the most recent series, and this goes into what you were saying about Mark Evanier, about doing a character that rhymes. As much as I say, “it's just consistent,” it isn't like anybody's sitting there on their laurels not pushing things. It's all about doing things like that, about having a character that rhymes, and having to do a whole series or whole issue in rhyme, or whatever, but there was a sequence in maybe issue three of the most recent series, or maybe two, I don't remember, but it was a series of panels, and there's literally a dozen characters in each panel. They're facing off against Groo, and then your camera’s moving around, and it's just a bunch of bad guys, and they're all facing off against Groo, camera moves around, you're seeing them from different angles, and they're all consistent. Every character in there, you can track where they go from panel to panel, and sometimes, there's little gags. Maybe this guy is trying to run away, and then he keeps coming back or something, or whatever. Sometimes, they're just in the right place where they would be. There's this thing about Aragonés’s art, where it looks like it's dashed off, it looks like it's drawn really quickly, and in fact, it is drawn very quickly, because he's very fast, but somehow the underlying skill that he has as an artist is so strong that it reminds me of Jack Kirby, with the stories about Jack Kirby, where he would start drawing in the upper left-hand corner of a page and draw down to the right-hand corner, and just draw a page, which I think Mark Evanier said is overstated, and isn't really exactly how it worked, because of course, Mark Evanier worked with Jack Kirby.

[41:53] David: Yeah. Oh, yeah. By the way, he was Jack's right-hand man for several years.

[42:01] John: During the New Gods stuff. The planning that goes into it, even if it's just mental, and even if it's instant for Aragonés, is amazing. So, I had mentioned reading the new Groo series, and somebody's like, “oh, yeah, Sergio has really slowed down recently.” Yeah, they only did seven issues of Groo this year.

[42:20] David: His output at 86 is still dwarfing almost every regular artist on any series of Marvel or DC. It's ridiculous. He's doing it by himself. No help. Nobody's penciling. Nobody's inking. He's doing it all itself. The level of difficulty for something like this. It's like you're tight-walking over the Grand Canyon for 40 years, and also, that's not enough, so you're juggling while you're doing it. That's what we're talking about. It’s incredible what these guys are doing. If you haven't read a Groo comic book, I hope you pick one up, and you can pretty much pick up anyone you want. Just find one.

[42:59] John: Yeah, if you read the whole thing, there are characters that show up again, that repeat in there, except Groo is completely unaware of that. It makes it so, on a certain level, it doesn't matter if you're as unaware of it as Groo because you'll be in the same story Groo’s at, you'll completely enjoy it. The bad guy in the series has a history with Groo. Groo never realizes that's going on, and I don't know the history of the guy with Groo. I just gathered that from reading it that he clearly knew who Groo was. It was from some of the mini-stories that have not read, or forgotten that he was a character or whatever, and I'm sure my enjoyment would have even been stronger if I'd read all of it and knew those bits about Rufferto’s collar, and that's constantly going on there whenever they're complaining about not having anything, they have a way out and Groo is either unaware or unwilling to do it. So, there's little bits I'm sure add to the enjoyment of it, but they're not necessarily going to pick up anyone. Okay, this is definitely a series that if you picked up issue four of this limited series, you would have a good time. It is a story. From one to four, there is a story. It starts in one, ends in four, but there's still enough goofy stuff going on, but

[44:16] David: You're not lost. You're entertained. 

[44:19] John: Yeah, you're not picking up issue 12 of Watchmen and thinking, “this is a good jumping off point.” It seems like everybody has a good time on it, and it seems like you wouldn't be doing this if you weren't having a good time. Sergio has done other stuff. I don't know. Is it tough to break out of it? Is there some sort of shell that got created? Probably not, because he's so talented and can do however many other things he wants to. Certainly not for everybody else involved, because they do do other stuff. It's not like Sergio didn't write a bunch of Bat Lash stuff in the last 10 years or so, or whatever other stuff he’s done. He's got a bunch of stuff, in general, Sergio-style. The Bat Lash stuff was serious comic.

[44:58] David: That was good to. Did you know that Severin drew that?

[45:01] John: John Severin?

[45:02] David: Yeah. I think John Severin drew the last Bat Lash miniseries that Sergio wrote.

[45:08] John: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, he was definitely doing stuff right up to the end. I knew somebody he was working with.

[45:12] David: Severin was so consistent right up until he passed away. The guy’s art was still rock solid. I don't remember that series when I was looking. I'm definitely going to pick that up. Bat Lash, John Severin doing Westerns. That's where it's at.

[45:30] John: Yeah. Bat Lash, he's what you’d call a Maverick?

[45:36] David: Yeah, I think so. That sounds right.

[45:37] John: A gentleman cowboy gambler.

[45:40] David: And Aragonés created that character. Again, wow. Anything else you want to add to the mix?

[45:50] John: It strikes me as one of those things that, not only am I happy that it still exists, in the way that, I mean, I haven't watched Simpsons in years with any consistency, but I'd be sad if Simpsons went off the air, just because it's this thing that's been around for so long, and there's a little bit of that with Groo, where it's great that it's there, but also, like I said, I've just been loving picking it up lately, just really enjoying reading the new bits, and it is definitely one of those things that, part of the enjoyment of it, when you read a bunch of it, is just seeing how the same puzzle pieces get arranged in a slightly different way to continue to be enjoyable. I don't know. There's not a big twist that happens in it or something. I mean, I think there's probably a couple of stories. There's ones where he crosses over with Conan or Tarzan, or something where okay, there's the gimmick for that story. This story is about the environment, but the gag is Groo is not very bright, and it's the same gag.

[46:49] David: Yeah. Wow. Shocker.

[46:53] John: Yeah, and Rufferto’s the perfect dog for Groo, the perfect dog character.

[46:57] David: I don’t think I have issue 4 because it just came out. I haven't read that one yet, but I'm looking forward to it, Lately, I read them when all four issues are out. I pick up the issues as they come along, and then I just hold them and then read it all at once. I like that style for Groo.

[47:15] John: Another thing that is actually fun, just to bring up on that same thing is, every issue also has a letters column that Mark Evanier writes. The letter writer writes. I mean, that he writes the responses to, and they're all, again it’s the same thing, the same dumb little jokes that have been there forever, and it's charming and great, and really nice.

[47:33] David: And there's a letters page, period. That just doesn't even happen in comic books today.

[47:38] John: Yeah, I think you're right. The right kid would really enjoy, kids in general, but there's something super fun to it. Part of me is baffled that there hasn't been a Groo the Wanderer TV show or something like that.

[47:51] David: Shocking to me that that hasn't happened, other than the style of art is so detailed that you can't do it in animation.

[47:59] John: What you can do is you can get some super cheap CGI and just check it out. In addition to the stuff I like that I talk about on here, I wind up watching a lot of terrible kids shows.

[48:16] David: That was a fun little reminisce. Yeah, hopefully everybody checks out Groo. Maybe we'll come back to Groo at some point and do a more deep-dive into a very specific set of issues or something. I'd like to maybe revisit this one soon. To our point, we should probably all be talking about Groo a little bit more.

[48:32] John: Sounds good.

[48:33] David: Thanks, everybody, for listening in. Appreciate y'all. We'll see you next week.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.cornerbox.club for updates, and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.