Groo - Publication History

Publication History

Aragonés created the character of Groo in the late 1970s. However at that time no comic book company would allow creators to retain the rights to their characters and Aragonés did not wish to surrender those rights. In 1981, a comic book, Destroyer Duck #1, was published by Eclipse Comics as a benefit to raise money for a legal battle over creator rights; a four-page story contributed by Aragonés featured Groo's first published appearance. His second appearance was a few months later in a back-up story in Star-Slayer #5, published by Pacific Comics.

In 1982, Pacific Comics began publishing Groo The Wanderer as a regular series. However, Pacific faced various financial difficulties and was only able to publish eight issues of the title. With Pacific unable to publish new material, a single shot issue of material that was originally written for them, titled the Groo Special, was instead published by Eclipse. It should be noted that when Groo was with Pacific, he was not portrayed as a bumbling idiot like was in future issues starting with Epic line. In fact, one issue had him use his brains to create sophisticated traps and his speech was similar to Conan the Barbarian's.

Aragonés and Evanier eventually negotiated a deal with Epic Comics, an imprint of Marvel Comics, for that company to take care of publication while preserving creator rights. This resulted in the longest run of Groo the Wanderer with 120 issues. In 1994, with Marvel facing financial difficulties, the title switched to Image Comics and was retitled Groo. (In the first issue Groo was heard to remark "The marvels of the world are but images before me.")

When Image in turn faced legal problems after publishing twelve issues, the title switched to Dark Horse Comics in 1998. Dark Horse is not publishing the title as a regular series but is releasing new material, as well as reprints, as periodic mini-series and collections.

At the 2007 WonderCon, the creators revealed that since 2005 they've been trying to produce a Groo / Conan crossover (both titles are published by Dark Horse) which would have the Wanderer encountering the Barbarian whom he has parodied. Unfortunately the project has encountered a number of postponements, but they believe the project may finally be coming to fruition. On September 9, 2007, Longtime Groo writer, Mark Evanier revealed that the Groo/Conan project is a go with no official release date as of yet. On March 5 and April 18, 2011, Aragonés revealed that the first two issues had been completed and were planned to be released in the summer of that year. On February 3, 2012, Evanier revealed that the series had been delayed again because of a backache suffered by Aragonés, but that the first issue was planned to be released in April 2012.