A Mind Is A Terrible Thing. (The Best Comic Book Characters I'm Pretty Sure Only I Remember, 6)

It's a MiniBest!

I may not get many more of these in before the month ends. I don't write these "minibests" on any sort of schedule, really, and any suggestion that there's reason to my rhyme will be adamantly rejected by me. Instead, whenever I think of a comic book character out of the blue, I try to let you, my readers, know about that person, freeing them from my own mind and putting them into yours, an especially necessary endeavor since it appears that there are, in fact, quite a few comic book characters who are disappearing into obscurity, who reside only in my memory anymore, characters like...

Grooella.

Character: Grooella.

What Was The Deal With Grooella: Groo was (is?) the brainchild of Sergio Aragones, who rose to fame (?) doing mostly those little drawings in the margins of Mad Magazine. They were little cartoons, simply drawn, that appeared outside the boundaries of the regular features. They looked like this:

Eventually, Sergio got his own comic book, Groo The Wanderer, about a dim-witted barbarian who traveled around the country, followed by a minstrel who sang funny songs about him, and who had dim-witted but funny adventures that involved, for some reason, repeated references to bowls of cheese dip.

Grooella was Groo's sister. Or, to quote from what appears to be the official Groo site:

Groo's elder sister, she first appeared in issue 18, as a queen! She holds little resemblence to her infamous sibling, other than physically. And that the Groo family luck seems to run strong in her, too. Her hair is quite a mess these days, although it used to be so nice when she was just a Li'l Grooella.

Grooella was a queen, who avoided Groo and who didn't want any of his poverty, bad luck, or cheese dip, but who kept being a victim of Groo's innocent blunders, anyway.

Why I Remember Her: I don't really have any clue why, on the drive into work this morning, I suddenly thought this: I wonder if Groo is still being published? (No, it's not.) Then I thought: I wonder if Grooella was actually Groo in disguise, or if I remember it correctly that Groo had a sister. (No, and yes.)

I did remember, too, that Grooella got her hair from some kind of childhood accident caused by Groo.

My mind is an amazing thing.

Level of Pointlessness Of This Entry: Very, very high. Especially when you consider that I was only in the office like, 3 days last week and I am way behind, and that despite that, I am sitting here, typing this, and trying to remember what the exact plot of the issue was in which Grooella, I'm pretty sure, had Groo help her invade a castle.

I think there was a twist at the end and he ended up invading Grooella's castle. I'll have to work on remembering that a little more. Hold all my calls!

Read other MiniBests.

I also think about SpongeBob now and then.