Why There Is Groo

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 12/2/94
Comics Buyer's Guide

DISCLAIMER: Every so often in this column, we'll be talking about current TV shows and comics on which I work. I promise not to do this often but, since Groo the Wanderer is debuting in a new #1 from a new publisher this month, it seems apropos to reflect on my life with the little nimrod. But honesty compels me to remind you, up topside, that I have a financial interest in the following.

I don't get paid for working on this comic, you understand; I just have a financial interest.

Here then is the definitive history of Groo…

It is written in the Old Testament that the wise man's eyes are in his head but the fool walketh in darkness. As should be evident to those who have ever read his comic book, the sun has been continuously setting on Groo since his inception. As Sergio and I go about the aberrant business of cobbling up Groo tales, we shuttle pages of Aragonés art back and forth, often with notes scribbled on the back. And on more than a few occasions, what I've scrawled on the last page of some Groo tale is: "Sergio — He's getting dumber." As, indeed, he always is. (I mean Groo, not Sergio)

Just how dumb the Wanderer has gotten, I hadn't fully realized until we hauled out the old books to plan some reprint volumes. I hadn't looked at them since they first came out; there's a strange transformation that comes over old comics — has something to do with the newsprint, I guess — that causes the dialogue to get worse as the books lay in storage. There are lines in those stories that I know I didn't write.

Sure enough, in some of his early stories, Groo almost approaches the I.Q. of a waffle iron. Through no intent of ours, it has since plunged.

A tonweight of other things have changed since Groo began. A great many — including, sadly, the jokes — have not.

We rarely mention cheese dip anymore. We actually rarely mentioned it back then. It was one of those toss-away gags that was cited by so many readers that we gave it a few repeats, running gags being ever so much easier than fresh humor.(And lemme tell you about dumb, people: I could give Groo a run for his kopins. We had this running joke going about cheese dip and folks had started to mail us cheese dip recipes, little tins of cheese dip…people were bringing Sergio and me, neither of whom cares for the stuff, gifts of cheese dip at conventions.So when we start our next running gag, do I have the brains to make it about Kruggerands or Cadillacs or T-bills? No. Clothhead that I am, we make it about mulch. That's right: Mulch. And, sure enough, readers get the ho-ho hysterical idea to send us little baggies of fertilizer. Am I a brain or what?)

And Groo now speaks a little less casually. As his I.Q. has dropped, so has his use of contractions. Plus, he now has the dog. And a larger supporting cast.And his body is a tad better proportioned: His legs, which once resembled pipe cleaners, now look more like that real thick Buitoni-brand macaroni. And Sergio and Mark are both running out of places to store their back issues…

I don't know precisely what caused Sergio Aragonés to create Groo and I don't know that he could tell you, either. But I'm sure it had something to do with the desire to expand on the one-to-three panel pantomime gags for which he was famous; to delve into whole storylines and a whole new world in which to place them. And I'm sure it had a lot to do with wanting to have a character he could call his own. Which, at the time, was not so easy to have.

Today, there are these things called "creator-owned comics," meaning that the writer and/or artist own(s) the comic, not the publisher. In the early-to-mid-seventies, as Señor Aragonés was doodling out his ideas for Sergio-created comics, there was no major American comic book publisher who was willing to publish a creator-owned comic. In fact, some even told you it legally could not be done.

I'm not kidding about this. There were writers and artists who created comics and had — or felt they had — no avenue but to hand All Rights over to the company in exchange for no credit, no ownership, no royalties. They got work doing the comic, if that much. Some tried to dicker — and they didn't even want full ownership…just, say, 20%. And they were told, "No, we will never in a zillion years make a deal like that." Sergio showed Groo to one publisher and was told, "Great…but we legally have to own it. You, as an individual, cannot legally own a copyright. It's invalid unless it's in the name of a company like ours."

Sergio knew that was wholly untrue. I wonder how many other writers and artists who heard that speech didn't.

But Sergio knew; knew enough to say no. Which brings me to another reason I am so proud to be hooked up with this here funnybook. The industry has changed, creator-owned comics now exist…and Groo was a pivotal creation in this and, perhaps, the biggest success story.

I first saw Groo in the big house that Sergio used to have up on the hill. It was at a party — I forget just what the occasion, not that Sergio ever needed an occasion to host a party. At one point, as I was loitering in his studio, our host said, "Let me show you something I am working on," and he hauled out pages. Many pages.And sketches. And doodles on the stationery of various TV shows on which he had recently worked.Barbarian comics had caught on — this was around '76 or '77, I think — and Sergio had dreamed up his own barbaric hero. The name, "Groo," he said, was selected because he wanted something that didn't mean anything in any language. (The linguists among our readers have since told us that isn't quite the case…)

Sergio and I were friends and it was around this time that we and our mutual amigo, the late Don Rico, all teamed to found C.A.P.S., the Comic Art Professional Society. In 1977, Sergio created and drew a detective strip called "T.C. Mars" for Joe Kubert's magazine Sojourn. Don did the dialogue over Sergio's plot and Sergio lettered — until I informed him that his lettering stunk, at which point I somehow wound up lettering the strip. (Remember this, when next you criticize something…)

Sergio and I had talked about the two of us doing something together but the opportunity never presented itself and Groo remained in the drawer. It took a duck to get him out of there.

In late 1981, writer Steve Gerber was in the midst of an extremely costly lawsuit with the Marvel Comics folks. Steve, of course, had created the character of Howard the Duck. Things had, uh, "happened" between him and Marvel and both parties felt that the other had violated the terms of certain agreements, certain understandings.  It went into court and though the matter was not yet near anything being decided, the legal fees had reached an intolerable point. It wasn't that Gerber was in danger of losing because his case wasn't strong.  He was in danger of losing just because the other guy had more money. It was proposed — I believe by Dean Mullaney of Eclipse Comics — that a benefit funnybook be produced.

And it was. Steve wrote the lead strip in Destroyer Duck and it was drawn by Jack Kirby and Alfredo Alcala, with the help of Steve Leialoha and Tom Orzechowski. When it came time to fill up the back of the book, the first person Gerber and I approached was Sergio. Right to his drawer of unpublished materials, he led us, saying, "Take anything you want." What I wanted was Groo.

Sergio had then done but one complete Groo tale and we published it, lovingly colored by my friend Gordon Kent, along with other donations to comprise Destroyer Duck #1.

It was, in its way, a historic publication — one that had a great many effects, not the least of which was several thousand smackers raised for the Duck Defense Fund. Gerber was able to carry his case to a point where an out-of-court settlement could be realized…one that left both sides not as happy perhaps as if they'd won but a lot happier than if they'd lost. Which is how most lawsuits, after all, end. Gerber's suit and settlement, along with the benefit comic, helped to convince many that the concept of a "creator-owned comic" was not quite the abomination of nature that some publishers had once thought it to be.

But there was more: A notion in some heads was shattered by that comic. It may seem ludicrous today but, back in '81, there had been few full-color, regulation-printed comic books issued outside of the major houses. And there were those in the funnybook business who believed, silly as it now seems, that it was physically impossible to do this; that in order to print a professional-looking comic book, you had to have a big office and a staff and a Production Department and all that overhead. Destroyer Duck may not have been the most brilliant comic ever published but it was a "real" comic book, no less professional than any issued by a "real" company. I recall a longtime DC/Marvel staffer — a gent who'd been an editor for both — holding that comic in his hands and paging through it, muttering in genuine astonishment, "My God, it can be done without them!" As I said, ludicrous today — but I think that comic did a lot to "demystify" the process of publishing funnybooks, a lot to convince the industry that a comic published by a small firm need not look like a fanzine.

Sergio could scarcely believe the reaction to that first appearance. Everyone wanted to see more Groo stories. Trouble was, there weren't any more Groo stories. Or places to publish them.

But this could be rectified. One day, he came over to Casa Evanier, toting a mess of Groo doodles, and suggested we go into partnership — me helping him produce this comic — and maybe us publishing it, ourselves.

We talked for much of an afternoon, finally deciding that creating this new comic, plus founding a firm to publish it, equalled at least one task too many for the two of us. Steve and Bill Schanes had founded Pacific Comics down in San Diego and issued a few books, like Jack Kirby's historic Captain Victory. I suggested we offer the Schanes Brothers the chance to publish Groo. We did, they agreed…and Pacific published Groo the Wanderer #1 in late 1982, after first previewing the little monster in the Starslayer comic then being done for them by Mike Grell. We had added Stan to the team and still had Gordon Kent aboard, doing the Herculean task of coloring all them little figures Sergio likes to draw. I would love to be able to report that Groo was an immediate hit. And, in a way, he was…only nobody knew it at the time.

The book showed an immediate profit — an oddity for an Evanier-connected project, to be sure — but, for a year or so, its future seemed unsure. No one thought it was a commercial prospect and, incredibly, the fact that it was selling well did not seem to dissuade them from that viewpoint.

Popular wisdom throughout the industry at the time was that there was really only one thing readers wanted: They wanted super-heroes. Super-heroes and more super-heroes. And they especially didn't want humor."Humor doesn't sell," everyone told us. I had the following conversation with a gent who owned a chain of comic book shops…

Said he: "I love Groo. It's my favorite comic.I read every issue and I tell all my customers to buy it and when they do, they all love it and start buying it. Every issue sells out, just like that!"

Said I: "Then, I assume you're going to increase your orders on it."

Said he: "Oh, no, I can't take that chance. See, there's really no market for funny comics these days…"

We're talking maddening here, folks. For a time there, I was doing three comics; in addition to Groo, I had a super-hero title named DNAgents and a war book for DC called Blackhawk, the three books selling almost precisely the same quantity of every issue. And every time I went to a convention, folks would compliment me on a big hit in DNAgents and then tell me that they loved Groo even though there was no market for that kind of comic.

Pacific published eight issues of Groo the Wanderer but the scent of their pending demise started to drift northward — from San Diego to our L.A.-based nostrils. By this point, we had decided that they were wrong — all those dealers and distributors who said there was no market for a funny comic. There was one and we were finding it. We felt that if we could just get the book out monthly — and get it on the same newsstands whose patrons knew Sergio from MAD — it could establish itself.

But that wasn't going to happen at Pacific. They had comic shop distribution, not access to regulation news outlets. Not only that but the firm was in financial trouble. An extra-long Groo Special wound up being published by Eclipse…and Sergio and I began wondering where to take our silly little enterprise. Finally, after many a conversation, I phoned Carol Kalish, a good friend and then an exec with Marvel Comics. Carol was a wonderful lady who left us way too soon…and among the lesser of her many achievements was arranging for Groo to join Marvel's "Epic" line.

Contacts were made and the matter then disappeared into the void of legal affairs. Sergio and I could but sit and wait and pray that the comic would have as many issues as there were, revisions to the contract. Took a long time.

While the lawyers were playing ping-pong, Pacific Comics went belly-up. And right here is a splendid example of why creator-owned comics can better serve the creative community: Had Groo been owned by Pacific (instead of Sergio), we couldn't have taken it elsewhere to keep it alive. Sage only knows where it would have wound up, if it wound up anywhere, and who would have wound up publishing or writing or drawing it.

Along the way, we had a few casualties: Pacific Comics and colorist Gordon Kent. The latter is still alive and well, especially now that he's not coloring Groo, but he gave up after a few Pacifics and we drafted Tom Luth for the job.

Groo was published by Marvel/Epic for ten years and one hundred and twenty issues, plus two graphic novels, seven trade paperbacks and a six-issue series that reprinted the pre-Epic Groo tales. In 1994, we took the thing to Image and you now know as much about it as I do.

Groo, I am delighted to report has outlived a lot of books that we were told in 1982 were "vastly more commercial." The book has built up a steady following and I have never, ever in ten-plus years, heard of a dealer getting "stuck" with a backroom full of issues no one wanted to buy. (If you are such an animal, drop me a note; Sergio and I will probably take 'em off your hands.) Recently, one of the "big two" publishers did an anonymous polling of its staff and Groo was voted the second-favorite comic in their line.

Sergio, Stan and I have done over 3,500 pages of Groo (and Tom has colored only slightly fewer) and we continue to have a great time. Thank you for supporting us in this and I hope we never disappoint.