Groo: In the Wild Explores Extinction and Sustainability
April 17, 2024
Groo: In the Wild is a graphic novel that follows a dim-witted barbarian named Groo the Wanderer and his dog Rufferto as they wander the countryside in search of food and frays. In the process of narrating their adventures, the novel explores environmental concepts such as the human-animal dichotomy, extinction, sustainability, and ecosystem fragility. This was the first graphic novel we’ve read for the book club, and it was an interesting departure from our past selections.
Artist Sergio Aragonés, writer Mark Evanier, and letterer Stan Sakai have been working together on Groo comic books since the 1980s. I first encountered Groo when I was in 8th grade and loved the absurd humor and intricately drawn pages. This graphic novel, which actually collects four issues of a mini-series published by Dark Horse Comics in 2023, contains many of the tropes I recall from Groo comics in the 1980s—and some of them are pretty deep cuts. Regular tropes include Groo being dimwitted, being called a mendicant, loving a good fight, the tendency to sink any boat he sets foot on, references to mulch, and being asked about the blue object on his chest (which helps hold together his sword straps). The deep cut at the start of the novel is a reference to Groo once having considered eating Rufferto—something that he mistakenly thinks he has done back in issue 38 (April 1988).
Groo’s reference to eating Rufferto is a fitting way to start this story because it opens the conversation about humanity’s relationship to non-human animals as companions, beasts of labor, and as sources of food. One of the non-human animals that Groo remembers eating in the past is the Ortix, a vaguely antelope-like creature whose antlers are made of ivory. On the road to a village, he encounters vendors who sell trinkets carved from the Ortix’s ivory antlers. They inform Groo, after he tries to eat a trinket, that the Ortix have been hunted to extinction for the sake of producing these ivory trinkets. Everyone in the village remembers the Ortix meat fondly, and they lament their extinction. The over-hunting of the Ortix is reminiscent of the over-hunting of buffalo by white trappers in the American west. Other examples of unsustainable extractive practices can be seen throughout the story, including deforestation that leads to the destruction of an ecosystem and the displacement of an indigenous tribe.
At the same time, sustainable practices are also depicted. One example is at a fishing village whose beaches used to be the breeding ground of a species of turtle. Their fishermen began using the beaches to store their boats, destroying the turtle’s habitat. But upon reflecting on the loss of the turtles, they realized they could find a balance by building a pier at which they could dock their boats, leaving the beach for the turtles. Another example is the restraint that Groo shows at the end of the story when he stumbles across a pair of Ortix, perhaps the last two in existence, and rather than kill them for food (as he would like to do), he instead leaves them alone and wanders away.
Throughout the entire story, Rufferto is depicted as more intelligent than Groo. Rufferto’s higher level of intelligence has been a characteristic since he was first introduced into the comic. His intelligence is revealed to the reader through his thought bubbles and his actions, but of course he is unable to communicate with Groo. A variety of non-human animals have proven themselves intelligent, emotional, and creative, which challenges humanity’s general arrogance toward non-human animals and other living beings, an arrogance predicated on a sense of intellectual superiority. Unfortunately, Groo: In the Wild doesn’t do much to challenge that attitude other than through Rufferto.
In the end, I think we all enjoyed reading Groo: In the Wild, and it proved a nice change of pace from the other books we have read. The question arose as to whether elementary school students would be able to catch the ecological messages of the story. I think that upper-elementary students would be able to grasp the injustices shown in the story, even if they might not have the vocabulary to name them the same way we would—hence the benefit of having a parent read along with their child. Older kids should have an easier time reflecting on the environmental themes and being able to explain the causal relationship between human activity and ecosystem destruction. Another Groo miniseries that engages with environmental issues is Groo: Hell on Earth (2008).
Additional Resources
Agyeman, Julian. “Sustainability.” Keywords for Environmental Studies, eds. Joni Adamson, William Gleason, David N. Pellow. NYU Press, 2015, pp. 186–189.
Alaimo, Stacy. “Animals.” Keywords for Environmental Studies, eds. Joni Adamson, William Gleason, David N. Pellow. NYU Press, 2015, pp. 9–13.
Aragonés, Sergio and Mark Evanier. Groo: Hell on Earth. Dark Horse Books, 2008.
————. Groo: In the Wild. Dark Horse Books, 2024.
Heise, Ursula K. “Extinction.” Keywords for Environmental Studies, eds. Joni Adamson, William Gleason, David N. Pellow. NYU Press, 2015, pp. 118–121.
