The power of the pen.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Evanier
Art: Sergio Aragones
What They Say:
Let’s go to press! The most intrepid reporter in Groo’s world, Weaver, is back, accompanied as usual by his assistant, Scribe. This time, they try reporting the truth about Groo, but of course no one believes them. Concocted by the award-winning team of Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, with letterer Stan Sakai and colorist Tom Luth!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Sometimes a book can ask the right question within it, especially when it’s humor based and can reference its own title. There’s a moment where Groo ends up in front of the two focuses on this installment and he basically asks them if they’re friend or foe because he can’t remember. Groo’s life is one lived very much in the moment and with the way people he interacts with seem to sway between friend and foe it certainly makes sense as time changes as does his own perceptions. Of course, most people within Groo’s circle outside of Rufferto usually don’t quality as either friend or foe but rather just lucky survivor to still be around after all that’s said and done.
As his wanderings continue, this one brings him into contact with Weaver and Scribe, two characters that I haven’t encountered before, or at least don’t remember encountering. They’re a journalism duo in essence where Weaver brings together the words while Scribe writes it all down so they can submit to the newspaper. Just like now, the newspaper business is a cutthroat one where when circulation starts to fall the journalists are first on the line to get the boot. The area that the pair are working in has been fairly quiet lately so there’s little news worth printing, never mind spending your hard earned kopin on! And Weaver has certainly turned in some terrible articles. With the push out the door to find real news in the world, he comes up with the idea of revisiting his best stories that were caused by Groo and opts to fabricate new one based on things going on that he sees.
Suffice to say, this is like invoking Groo in a sense. And while it doesn’t take long for Weaver to put together a great fabrication, the reality is exactly what he described as Groo enters the picture. Terrible things happen around Groo’s presence and that’s something we’ve seen regularly. Here we get it in smaller doses with little things happening for the most part but it all still sends the locals into a tizzy and causes a lot of destruction. The fun is in Weaver doing his best to distance himself from Groo but continuing to end up in his sphere of influence, writing it all done and having his writings lost no less. It’s good comedy in the usual sense here with the way the two sides interact and it reinforces that Weaver and Scribe are like many in this world in that they’re neither friend nor foe to Groo.
In Summary:
One of the weaker chapters in the series, Groo: Friends and Foes is still a good bit of fun here with the chaos and destruction that invariably follows our title character. Weaver and Scribe aren’t the most engaging of characters and their profession offers only a little bit of a new way to look at how Groo impacts the world. I do like the pair with the whole flowery driven Weaver is while Scribe says nothing so there’s definitely appeal there in that. But mostly the encounters here aren’t all that memorable and a lot of what we get with the chaos just involves your locals going about their day and panicking into situations that makes things worse. We do get some great artwork once again and fantastic two page spread of destruction, so there’s plenty to enjoy visually even if the story itself feels weak.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: August 19th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
I always liked Groo, and I love your sentence: “Of course, most people within Groo�s circle outside of Rufferto usually don�t quality as either friend or foe but rather just lucky survivor to still be around after all that�s said and done.”
Which sums things up quite nicely, lol.