This broke a while back, but I’ve only just had time to mention it – in April 2012, we see the meeting of two of the world’s greatest barbarians… written by Mark Evanier, art by Sergio Aragones and Thomas Yeates, colored by Tom Luth, it’s Groo Vs Conan:

“It had to happen: the most heroic warrior in history meets the stupidest as Robert E. Howard’s immortal Conan the Barbarian crosses swords with Sergio Aragones’ Groo the Wanderer in Groo vs. Conan #1. This four-issue miniseries was concocted by the Eisner Award-winning team of Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones, aided by master illustrator Thomas Yeates and master colorist Tom Luth. Will Conan annihilate Groo? Will Groo turn out to be the man who can defeat Conan? We’ll see.”

Groo Vs Conan Issue #1 is released in April from Dark Horse.

And really, isn’t it time we had some sort of hardback omnibus collection of Evanier and Aragones’ Groo? I’d buy it in an instant.

Groo was one of those comics I read when I was a naive and superhero loving teen. Along with Cerebus, Grendel and Mage it opened up a whole world of comics to me that I never knew existed. So I’m rather pleased to highlight this fantastic 336 page collection of Mark Evanier & Sergio Aragones’ Groo – The Groo Treasury Volume 1 is coming out from Dark House in late October. It’s the very earliest Groo material – which has long remained out of print.

There’s an awful lot of Groo on the Internet, but a great place to start would be Sergio Aragones’ website and Mark Evanier’s Groo page, from whence this:

“GROO THE WANDERER was created by my best amigo, Sergio Aragonés.  It’s the story of a barbarian who is as dangerous as a stampede of cattle…and almost as smart.  Along with his intrepid, oddly-loyal hound Rufferto, he roams another time and place, leaving destruction in his wake.  We pass this all off as a humor comic and have not only succeeded in fooling readers for many years but have actually won a few awards, at least one of which I’ve mislaid.”

And whilst on Sergio Aragones, the thing that actually started me thinking about this was this blog post; Mad About Sergio by Randy Renaldo that documents a visit to a gallery exhibition of Aragones’ work. There are some wonderful photos, including this of the man himself, both real and drawn:

And this, one of the exhibits on display, showing every bit of the great Aragones humour: