272 GROO THE WANDERER
Epic Comics. Aragonés transferred the series to Epic, where it became perhaps the
fi rst creator-owned title distributed to the newsstand market, and 120 issues were
published before Epic’s demise in 1994. Th e series then moved to Image Comics and
later (1998) to its current publisher, Dark Horse Comics. Groo remains in active,
though sporadic, publication and is thus one of the oldest creator-owned properties
in American comics.
Like Conan the Barbarian , his most obvious infl uence, Groo is an itinerant
barbarian mercenary. Unlike Conan, however, Groo is appallingly stupid. He mis-
understands the most obvious situations, fails to anticipate the consequences of his
actions, does the exact opposite of what he is told, and has no memory to speak of.
Th erefore, Groo’s adventures usually end in disaster. Any ship with Groo on it inevi-
tably sinks, and the towns Groo visits usually end up in ruins. Although every Groo
story ends with a moral, Groo himself never learns anything from his mistakes; on
witnessing the disasters he causes, he merely asks “Did I err?” Yet Groo is a deadly
swordsman, able to defeat entire armies singlehandedly, and he loves nothing more
than a “fray” (except cheese dip, his passion for which is a running joke). Yet Groo is
no asset to an army, because he tends to slay his allies as well as his enemies. Despite
having caused more deaths than a typical pandemic, however, Groo is rarely presented
as a villain. Th e people he kills or bankrupts are often presented as deserving it; he
sometimes performs good deeds, though usually by mistake; and on rare occasions
he even experiences personal growth, such as in issue #100 of the Epic series when
he learns to read. Groo stories often follow a formula—Groo wanders into a town or
village and either gets hired to do a job, or volunteers to save the local people from a
menace, but ends by causing disaster for his employer or the people he was trying to
save—and fans often joke that Groo features the same story every issue. However, the
Groo formula is surprisingly versatile and adaptable. Th e series features a large sup-
porting cast, including Groo’s canine companion Ruff erto, based on Aragonés’s own
dog; the wise but unscrupulous Sage; the Red Sonja-like Chakaal; the overrated hero
Arcadio; and Captain Ahax, whose ships are repeatedly sunk by Groo. Recurring
villains include the mother-and-daughter witches Arba and Dakarba, and the merce-
nary commander Taranto, who repeatedly convinces Groo of his good intentions and
then tries to kill him. Moreover, Groo’s fi ctional world has some uncanny similarities
to our real one, and many Groo stories use the standard narrative formula to satirize
real-world social problems. For example, the Eisner -nominated “Th e Book Burners”
(Epic #78) is a polemic against censorship; “Th e Plight of the Drazils” (Image #7) is
about illegal immigration; and the 2007–8 miniseries Groo: Hell on Earth is about
global warming and features thinly disguised caricatures of George W. Bush and
Al Gore.
Even if Evanier were serious about the monotony of the stories, Groo would still be
notable for Aragonés’s artwork, which features perfect comic timing and an obsessive
level of detail. Most issues of Groo begin with a two-page splash that features a fully
rendered background and several dozen individual fi gures. Aragonés can produce
