More Groo Stuff

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Back in the seventies, Sergio was a writer-performer on a short-lived revival of Laugh-In that is best remembered for introducing Robin Williams to television. This is a newspaper clipping that was located by the heroic Ruben Arellano of the Groo Mailing List. It depicts a Farrah Fawcett-Majors look-alike contest taped for that show with Sergio and fellow cast members Kim Braden and Bill Rafferty, whose name is misspelled down in the caption. And, yes, that's Sergio's real hair. I still can't figure out how he stuffs it all under that short, black wig he insists on wearing now for personal appearances. (Info on joining the Groo Mailing List, whereupon one receives mucho e-mail from Groo fans and sometimes M.E., can be found over at Josh Jones's groo.com.)

This is a very old picture — from back when Groo was published by Pacific Comics — of the Groo Crew. Left to right, we have Stan Sakai (who does an amazing job lettering the comic), Tom Luth (who does an even more impossible job coloring the comic), M.E. (who does...uh, I'm not sure what he does but I'll bet it's amazing) and Whatzisname. A couple thousand pages later, not one of these people has found a better job.

One issue, back when Marvel was publishing Groo, Sergio drew a scene in which Groo's rear end was exposed. Actually, he'd drawn a few of those before and there were no complaints from anyone...but this one time, for some reason, the Comics Code raised a stink and demanded the scene be deleted before publication. Our editor told me and I told Sergio...and he was outraged. The next day, he showed up at my house with an array of cartoons of which the one at left is typical. He wanted to run them in the fanzines and launch a big, noisy campaign to "save Groo's ass." He had buttons in mind, placards, demonstrations at conventions, etc. As he was telling me all this, I interrupted and told him, "I just got off the phone with New York. The Code bought our argument and they've rescinded the order. Groo's butt can stay." Sergio was very disappointed.

Every year, the National Cartoonists Society dispenses, among other honors, its coveted Reuben Award. A few years ago, it went to Sergio, but that's not why I'm running the above drawing, which was the cover to the program book for their 2000 event. I'm running it because if you look closely at the lower right, you'll see that the great Jack Davis has drawn everyone's favorite nitwit barbarian. In case you can't see it, here's a close-up...