Groo the Wanderer #14 - Video Review by 80s Comics

Welcome to 80’s Comics Pro, the first professional 80’s comics review. And that’s not to say the review is professional — it’s anything but — but it means that you are a professional at watching 80’s Comics. Broadcasting from the 1970’s Intergalactic Space Bar, because the way to avoid a horrible virus on Earth is to be in space reviewing comic books. Like Groo the Wanderer. Issue number 14. Still trying to find where the camera lens is. There it is. Issue number 14 from 1986. It’s a great issue of Groo. It’s got an ad for MASK on the back. And I have a beer to enjoy with Groo the Wanderer. Beer enhances Groo. In most 80’s comics, this is a Wind Gap from East End Brewing in Pittsburgh. In these horrible times, make sure to support your local breweries. Let’s change up the camera shot and film beer being poured into a glass, which makes you more professional for watching it.

I’m gonna get shot. And the slow pour. Talk about the beer in a second. Can you smell it. That smells great. Very fruity. This beer is one of their neighborhood beers, a mango pineapple milkshake IPA. Nothing says Groo the Wanderer like mango pineapple milkshake IPA. Welcome back to 80’s Comics for the review of Groo the Wanderer issue number 14 from April of 1986. Groo the Wanderer becomes a slave, but then frees the slaves. He’s like Spartacus, without the cinematic brilliance of Stanley Kubrick. Gru the Wanderer. You know, Kubrick never actually liked that film.

One day, Groo did what many wanted him to do. He got lost. Wandering through the desert like Conan, but not as smart as Conan. He passes up all of the beautiful women in the oasis. Conan would never pass up beautiful women in the oasis. He would find a way to get drunk, pass out in front of all of them, and wake up the next morning robbed by all the beautiful women, but he would not pass them up. Groo, however, passes up the beautiful women and encounters the quarry. The pyramids are being built. Look at the amount of detail on this page. It’s amazing. And if you look down here in the corner, yeah, you see it. Got that one through the censors.

He has no awesome intellect, no credo to believe. His courage is the courage of the utterly naive. He has no land to call his own, no regiment commanding. And when he leaves a city, not a structure is left standing. He has no place to hang his swords, no family to need him. He cannot get a job unless his fame does not precede him. The people he visits bid him welcome as a curse. They call him Groo the Wanderer, or often something worse. Nobody calls him Jar Jar. That would be very un‑Lando. I love how this is basically the tale of Spartacus. Groo starts out as a slave building the pyramids and screws everything up so badly that they start to promote him, and he screws that up, and eventually finds his way at the docks working a different job, and he messes that up and gets squashed under a rock. Groo’s stupidity is what makes it funny. It’s Groo’s idiocy that we can all relate to. We’re all idiots, but occasionally we have less idiotic days. Groo does not. Groo is an idiot all the time, and that’s why it’s funny.

Groo doesn’t know how to tie knots, so the ships float away overnight in sync. The artwork is delightful. The writing is hilarious. Here’s the quarry. Surely here Groo will find his place. Groo has the kind of brain that belongs in a rock quarry, where these slaves have been trying to finish the façade for twenty years. And along comes Groo. This reminds me of Life of Brian, another one of my favorite movies. Trying to finish the façade. They show Groo how not to do it, which is exactly what Groo does. So he breaks the entire façade. It’s a catastrophe. No. Look, it’s the toys from MASK. Definitely not a catastrophe. Flying Camaro. Can’t go wrong with that. The slaves are rich and they’re free and they want to thank Groo, but he runs away because he’s Groo. And he’s an idiot. And look, it’s an advertisement for one of my favorite issues of G.I. Joe. I love that cover. That’s a great cover. G.I. Joe Yearbook number two.

And Groo the Wanderer number 14. It’s a great issue. They’re all great issues. It’s Groo. Highly recommended. It’s even better than Spartacus. Cheers. And thank you for watching the first 80’s Comics Pro review. My lack of professionalism has made you more professional. And that makes the universe just a little bit better, but not. Not usually one for a milkshake IPA, but they ran out of my favorite double IPA, so it was an impulse buy and worth it. Also, I like the can. And you know what else I like, in addition to Darth Vader. Groo the Wanderer. Issue 14. It’s a fun read. It’s hard to say it’s better than 12 or 13, but they’re all good.

And what I like about Groo, and why I think Groo is good, and why I think Groo is worth reading today, is that there’s just nothing else like it. There are a lot of 80’s toys turned into commercials turned into comic books — Transformers, G.I. Joe, all that stuff. They’re just commercials. Now those are the best ones, but they’ve also got a lot of superhero comics and other genres in there, but there’s only one Groo. And you can tell when you read it, when you look at the artwork. Sergio Aragonés was just a genius. This is a great project, and I think it’s probably what he’s best known for. At least it’s what I associate him with. Didn’t he do stuff for Mad Magazine also. It’s been a long time since I read Mad, but I could be wrong. It’s just a terrific read, and they’re all funny, and they’re all relatively easy and cheap to collect. Most comic books are super cheap to collect because nobody cares anymore. But a couple bucks gets you a bunch of Groos, and you can grab a good beer and have a good time and get a good laugh with Groo the Wanderer.

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