Groo: Friends and Foes vol. 1

While we’re on the subject of comedic fantasy action stories (in comic book form), here’s the return of the granddaddy of them all.  Of course, we did get “Groo vs. Conan” earlier this year and that wound up being a bit underwhelming.  Have Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier lost their touch with the character after all these years?  This first volume of “Friends and Foes” indicates that the answer is “No,” once you get past the first issue.  Groo’s latest series is a twelve-issue romp (the first four of which are collected here) that has him meeting up with one of the many recurring characters that have been featured in his series over the years.  Unfortunately, the first issue’s story — involving Captain Ahax, whose ships Groo ALWAYS sinks — isn’t all that funny once you realize that the creators are nicking the captain’s plan from “The Producers.”  Once you realize that, the story and humor become predictable and obvious as well as not much fun.

Things pick up with the following three stories as our protagonist has run-ins with the crafty gypsy Granny Groo, sorceresses Arba and Dakarba, and the astoundingly heroic and self-absorbed warrior Arcadio.  The setups in their stories are more clever, involving Groo being told not to do anything and then sold, a giant version of himself is created along with magical duplicates in order to defeat him, and dragons.  Evanier gets in many funny lines in these issues while Aragones art…  What can I say?  The man is a living legend with the amount of detail he packs into each page and impeccable comic timing, and his work here shows that he hasn’t lost a step in all these years.  There’s also an ongoing subplot teased throughout these issues as a young girl named Kayli searches for her father.  His name is given as Karli… which is good because it (theoretically) rules out the title character.  It’s a decent enough hook to give the series some momentum, though the attraction here will always be seeing Aragones and Evanier putting Groo into one fray after the other.  If you’re a longtime fan of the series like me, then this will be one more volume you’ll want in your collection.