[Groop]Groo is not a mass murderer

[Mo orst]

I thought about this idea for awhile, and came to some ideas.

For Groo to be evil, his killing would have to include a dark element of 
sadistic pleasure.  The way I've always thought of him was more as a force 
of nature... an element to be avoided much like he's portrayed as the "hot 
potato" in Groo: The Game.

I remember all those times where he charges into battle for no reason other 
than "the fray!"  I think there may be a sadistic element to his character.  
From one point of view, he may approach a battle as a beast he knows he can 
pleasurably manipulate and annihilate.  He enjoys it.  He relishes in it.  
He's slaughtered hundreds of thousands.

He has also, however, gone to war for noble purposes.  Like when he emerged 
out of the burning library in issue 100, primed to punish the mindless 
treasure seekers.  Much of the time, his battles have been at the wrong time 
for the right reasons, and often for the wrong reasons for issues for which 
he later had a change of heart.  In this he is a symbol or archetype for all 
of us struggling to come to the right conclusions and struggling to fight 
the right fight (so to speak), and it is not appropriate to refer to him as 
a mass murderer.  He did after all live in a time of marshall law, and often 
unjust dominion by magistrates and rulers.  Killing is a way of life in such 
a world.

"Mass murder" seems more like a term for modern times.  We don't call 
Ghengis Khan (sp?) or the Romans mass murderers.  We call them conquerors.  
A mass murderer is more of a predator in an urban or suburban setting.  Not 
a hungry vagrant skilled with swords who may or may not have a reason to 
defeat an army.

Groo, as far as I can tell, usually doesn't kill anyone in a bar, for 
example, unless he's insulted or challenged.  He doesn't hunt people down 
and kill them without provocation, and he doesn't burn filled churches, 
monestaries, or barns down with the intent to kill people.  He causes those 
things on accident.

The sadism in his killing, I think, is more a result of a childish mind.  
Many of us go through a "burning ants with a magnifying lense" phase of one 
sort or another when we're children.  Often, as in my case, its a touch of 
pyromania(look out Gary!).  Perhaps Groo is just a guy who never got over 
that sort of thing.  He was low on positive male role models growing up 
(orphanage owners and Toranto, for heaven's sake), and he was torn from a 
loving mother who doubtless would have instilled in him a different morality 
on the taking of life.

-Rock

>I don't think he's a mass murderer.. he kills in battle. we send our boys
>off to war, but when they come back we don't (usually) call 'em killers.
>If he just went around killing people off the battlefield without being
>provoked... then he'd be evil.
>
>
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>Chad M. Riden
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