The scales shift their balance once again.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Evanier
Art: Sergio Aragones
Colors: John Ercek, Tom Luth
Letterer: Stan Sakai
What They Say:
Okay, so here we are in a new land full of gold. We have pirates who want to seize all that gold, and we have clergymen who want to convert all of the locals to belief in their ”one true God” (even if they have to resort to torture), and we have the many true gods of this world looking down on it all . . . but most of all, we have Groo, the man with the capacity to make any bad situation worse.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we hit the penultimate installment of this miniseries with this issue it sets everything into motion for change. Groo books are Groo books by their very nature and there’s a certain built in predictability to it that’s appealing to a lot of fans because we want to see Groo being Groo and all the ways others try to either avoid that happening or attempt to use it to their advantage. Mark Evanier plays very well in this realm and enjoys all the wordplay and banter while Sergio Aragones delivers some really amazing artwork issue after issue. This one really takes it up a few notches with the scale of the cast involved as more and more gods are introduced from within this realm, making it an even crazier experience.
Groo’s role this time around is one where he’s being manipulated again until he regains control himself, albeit just being manipulated in a different way. His search for cheese dip is the big driver but he gets some fun when he’s assigned to train a motley crew of men to become soldiers to take down the locals and establish order here for the god Diothis. The plan to win over the locals through force is pretty standard fare and Evanier doesn’t try to pretty it up really, though it’s kept in pure Groo-style. The locals are going through the motions with a lot of this, including building the temple for the god they don’t even believe in, but they eventually reach their limit with how they’re being treated because their peaceful ways will work for them for only so long. And that’s when things start to turn bad all around.
Amid all of that we also have the gods from the previous series feeling very claustrophobic with the number of new gods appearing in this infinite realm, including a god of unsalted butter. The repetition god is my favorite, though. Aragones gets to put together a great range of characters here as new additions with some fun interplay all while Diothis goes on about how this isn’t how any of it should be done while taking the blame for it being done. We also get some fun with Ahax as he makes his way out of the bay and back onto land, frustrated at not knowing how Groo destroyed his ship while not being on it, and we see that he’s going to get sucked back up into things as well. You do feel bad for Ahax on some level, conniver that he is, because nothing goes right for long and he’s getting tossed about a fair bit.
In Summary:
With one more issue to go I’m hoping that we’re closer to being done with the gods in general for a while. This series and the previous series had its fun to be sure but the gods element and the overly extended storylines just don’t work that well one after the other. The more self-contained stories are what I enjoy more at this point with the character. There’s good stuff here and just enjoying what Aragones brings to the page regardless of story makes it worthwhile as there’s just something magical about what he produces and this miniseries is no exception.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 13th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
