The power of belief.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Evanier
Art: Sergio Aragones
Colors: John Ercek, Tom Luth
Letterer: Stan Sakai
What They Say:
Groo finds himself the unwitting pawn in a game that involves a newly-found land filled with gold. There are those who think, ”How do we convert their gold to our gold?” and also ”How do we convert their gods to our gods?” How does Groo figure into all of this and, more importantly, how does he create doom and destruction for all? It’s brought to you (as usual) by the award-winning team of Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier, with the help of Stan Sakai and Tom Luth.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With this issue the Groo: Play of the Gods arc ends and hopefully everything related to the gods for a while. Though there’s been fun bits along the way the parallel arcs have gotten a bit overbearing as so much of it just felt drawn out. Mark Evanier certain skewers in the way he always does and that makes for some fun to be sure but the back and forth nature just didn’t click for me this time around. What helped, as always, is that even if the story doesn’t totally grab you, you still have some great layouts and artwork to check out as Sergio Aragones has always delivered. There are so many fun little details to dive into with each issue to see in the backgrounds that it’s simply a delight from that alone.
The finale works with the concept that everyone is essentially stranded at this point, though technically not Groo and obviously not the natives. This leads to some amusement as they find him to be very wise and engaging and end up believing that “his” god in Diothos is worthy of attention, so they get on a mad dash to build a temple to him. Groo, for his part, is oblivious to much of this and is just enjoying himself, such as playing games or reveling in the way that the locals have discovered how to make cheese dip for him in order to honor and please him. While you know Groo will ruin everything here eventually if he stays, this is one of those rare times where he seems to have worked things out well enough to be able to not cause too much trouble and make out well. At least until his desire to fight surfaces again
A lot of the fun is in watching how Ahax and the others try to figure out things to their advantage. While the priests are distracted by the temple building (and lack of torture to get it accomplish), Ahax has his ship getting closer while the rest have discovered where he got the gold from. The coming together of a plan is a given and while Ahax does do his damndest to ensure that Groo won’t be a part of things in the wrong way it doesn’t work. It will almost never work. That’s almost a surety. But it’s delightful to watch how simple miscalculations undoes what Ahax and the others are doing. I do like how things wrap up in relation to the gods as well since it’s totally appropriate in that we get the introduction of a Groo-like god. I wish it had actually happened earlier in the run so that we could see the fallout from it here and now because I really don’t want to see the gods in Groo books for a good long time to come.
In Summary:
Groo: Play of the Gods ends like just about all Groo books do and there’s comfort in that. Well, technically they all end in a Rufferto one-page but you know what I mean. The gods side of this arc has its moments and certainly it’s comedy as we got to know all the local gods but it was almost filler in a lot of ways. Having that feeling on top of seeing the way that the main story with Groo and all those that sailed over interacted with a lot of repetition just made it less interesting as it progressed. There’s good material within it, just not consistently. I had fun with aspects of it but it’s almost something that feels like it might have worked better at two or maybe three issues with more judicious editing than four issues, or with more variety within it to get it to work at four issues. Most Groo fans will be pleased and we’ll definitely be looking forward to more adventures with our favorite cheese dip connoisseur.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 11th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
