Groo: The Hogs of Horder

When asked “What do you say to people who think that ‘Groo’ is a one-joke comic?” artist/creator Sergio Aragones responded, “They probably wouldn’t get the joke anyway.”  I believe the exchange can be found in the “Groo 25th Anniversary Special” and it underlines the series core concept:  Having the title character be dumber than any rational standard would allow for.  That being said, when you’ve got a character defined in such a way the entertainment usually comes from the situations they’re thrust into than any growth or development (see also:  “Golgo 13”).  It’s why “Groo” works best as a vehicle for satire, from the moral lessons contained in his early issues to making light of real-world issues in his latter days.

Keeping with that trend, “Hogs of Horder” is all about our current economic crisis and its origins.  Now, the last “Groo” story “Hell on Earth” failed in my opinion because it was too on the nose.  It felt like Aragones and writer Mark Evarnier were hammering the reader with their thoughts on what was wrong with the world and how it should be fixed rather than just telling us a story and letting us infer the meaning.  Here, while it’s still obvious what their targets are, everything is one step removed from our reality so it still functions as a proper “Groo” story.  There’s also a lot of fun to be had in figuring out who is representing what here, and the comedy works much better here too (especially Evarnier’s list of true facts that he made up at the end of the collection).