Comic Review : Groo vs. Conan #2
One learns, ideally, by the Socratic method. If one is a genius, one can even talk to oneself and achieve a dizzying intellect. If one is an idiot, like Groo, one talks to oneself and ends up sinking a ship, destroying a village, and slaying those one pledged to save. Groo vs. Conan #2 is full of much of this “idiot dialectic,” with Groo puzzling the age-old dilemma of how he can kill the bakers and eat their bread too.
In the previous issue, Groo accepted the job of slaying the bakers in the town; the king wishes this to be done so that the town would fail, the peasants would leave, and the king would have a place for his new castle. In Groo vs. Conan #2, the equally mercenary Conan accepts the job of slaying Groo, so that the bakers and their surrounding village will be able to retain their carb-filled lifestyle. Groo’s reputation is exaggerated by rumor, so that by the time Conan leaves he thinks Groo is a fifty foot giant with many heads. Meanwhile, Groo has visited the town and its baking aroma and found that he also craves bread, pies, pastry, crullers, and cakes. He is of two minds (which is two more minds than usual) and cannot decide how he can do his job and enjoy the baked wares that he smells. “Maybe if I slay the bakers in a way that will not stop them from baking,” he muses. While Groo is roasting some quail that his dog Rufferto spotted, Conan rides up to his camp and the two iconic barbarians meet. “Fellow traveler.” quoth the grandiloquent Conan, “have you enough sustenance to tithe to a famished spirit?” “No,” says Groo, “but if you’re hungry, you can share my food.”
Conan has no idea he’s sitting on a log next to Groo, and after they eat the birds, Groo agrees to help Conan slay the fifty foot monster with many heads. Groo has no idea that he just agreed to be an accomplice in his own murder. The king learns that the bakers still live, mocks himself for depending on the infamous fool, and marches his soldiers into the town. Groo and Conan arrive in town, the villagers cry “monster,” and both Conan and Groo shout “where?”
It is at this point that a Rashomon-styled narrative begins. Sergio Aragonés has mentioned borrowing from the film Rashomon himself in interviews touching on this project. The last five pages of Groo vs. Conan #2 are told by a peasant that so wanted to be the first one to bear the gossip of how Groo and Conan’s epic showdown went that he left the fight at its very beginning, without watching any of it. He runs immediately to the bar, and with the fanboy’s preference for serious heroes over cartoony ones, assumes Conan will win, and tells the story of how Conan beat Groo to the bar crowd. It is important to remember that this is only gossip from a non-observer, and we will probably get two more versions of this battle in issues 3 and 4.
Or, we might not. One-upping Rashomon, Sergio Aragonés is not actually telling one story from several observers, but one story of a cartoonist with a concussion who dreamed that he was Conan and imagined different perspectives on the story. This is Rashomon ad absurdum, with the interlinked subjectivities of unreliable narrators merely the daydream of the fictional avatar of a Mad Magazine artist, as drawn and told by the artist and his co-storyteller Mark Evanier. Everything nailed down is undermined at any possible opportunity, and quite possibly will be burned, smashed, crashed, slain, or sunk by the end of the story, knowing Groo and Sergio Aragonés. If, and only if, we get a definitive end to this story. Only one thing is certain: Groo will remain the fool he is.
Groo vs. Conan #2 is recommended to all that enjoy quality comic books and comedy high and low. If you don’t enjoy comedy, you should probably read this anyway, as you need to lighten up. As is usual with Aragonés and Evanier’s event books (Sergio Aragonés Massacres Marvel, Sergio Aragonés Destroys DC), the story is also postmodern and metafictional, and will sustain multiple readings, even in a single sitting. You can ask for print editions of Groo vs. Conan #2 at your local comic shop, or buy it digitally on the Dark Horse website and app.