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Several folks have inquired over the years, why it is that the Groo Special that was advertised as a Pacific Comic in 1984 wound up being an Eclipse Comic?  For what little it may be worth, here's the explanation: In 1983, we were doing Groo at Pacific but becoming increasingly aware that the company would probably soon go under.  Around the time of the '83 San Diego Con, we entered into discussions with Marvel about moving Groo over to become part of their newly-formed Epic line.  Negotiations took forever.  Marvel hadn't made many "creator-owned" deals at that point and their lawyers kept trying to insert clauses that would have required Sergio and me to go trim all their editors' sideburns, or stuff like that.

When the negotiations reached the stage where they looked like they might go the distance, we informed Pacific of our probable migration and they said that was fine with them, but they were not overly inclined to keep publishing Groo on a regular basis if they would soon be losing it from their line.  We didn't want there to be a long gap between the last Pacific and the first Marvel/Epic issue.  (At that point, we had no idea when the Epic deal might kick in.)  So we proposed doing a one-shot Groo Special to span the period, and Pacific agreed.  Sergio and I prepared the contents, delivered the book to Pacific and they shipped it off to their color separator, who made the film.

Then Pacific collapsed.  There was a period there where they were putting out their most lucrative books, trying to stay afloat, and it didn't look like they'd ever publish the Groo Special.  It also didn't look like either we or the color separating company (run by a friend of ours) would ever get paid.

By this point, the Marvel/Epic deal was pretty much set, which left us with the problem of what to do about the Groo Special.  We wanted to see it printed so that the material would be seen, and so we and the separator would get paid...but it didn't seem practical to have Marvel put it out.  That would have delayed it even longer, meaning a longer absence of Groo from the comic shops, and we'd have had to reopen the negotiations with Marvel to add this one book to a contract that had taken, by then, almost a year to hammer out.  Marvel also would probably not have been able to use the completed color separations since they'd been configured for a printer with whom Marvel did not then do business.

Eclipse, however, was printing most of their comics with that printer, and I was then doing a couple of them — DNAgents and Crossfire.  So I called up their publisher and made a quick deal for them to issue this one issue.  Pacific released the film to us and we had the color separator take out the Pacific logos and ads and put in Eclipse stuff.  (Eclipse, by the way, drastically underprinted the book.  The entire press run sold out immediately, making it one of the rarer Groo publications.)  And that's pretty much how it all happened.  See what important things you can learn when you read Groo Stuff?

Groo and all related characters and artwork are Copyright © 2007 Sergio Aragonés

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