Groo: Gods Against Groo

This is the concluding chapter to the saga that began in “Fray of the Gods” and “Play of the Gods” and if you’re worried that you might be missing something by jumping in with this volume, don’t.  All you need to know is that the title character’s antics over the past two volumes have seen him venerated as a deity amongst enough people to actually grant him a place in the current pantheon of gods.  Said pantheon is just as thrilled as you’d expect to have someone like Groo amidst their ranks, and they’re looking for a way to have him expunged as soon as possible.  Which may be easier said than done when his earthbound incarnation finds himself on a new continent with a host of inhabitants eager to believe in his divinity.

While this is the main plot of the volume, there’s a lot of stuff going on as well.  You’ve got the Sage meeting up with an ambitious queen who is looking to pillage the riches of the country where Groo winds up.  The Minstrel and his daughter Karli running afoul of said queen.  Ahax and Taranto also winding up in the same country as Groo as they try to figure out how to turn this situation to their advantage.  All of this extra stuff gives one the feeling that creators Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier knew that their main story didn’t have enough meat to it and they needed to stretch things out to fill a four-issue miniseries.

The good news there is that none of what’s here, main plot and extraneous stuff, is outright bad and it’s as agreeably comedic as the series has been in recent years.  It also serves as a reminder that the best series in recent years has been “Friends and Foes” which adhered to the done-in-one style of storytelling that defined their classic Epic series (still waiting on a proper omnibus collection of those, in case anyone’s listening).  While I don’t know what Aragones and Evanier have in mind for Groo’s next adventure, I wouldn’t mind seeing a return to that format and the tighter storytelling it would likely enforce.