Space Circus by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier

This is not Groo. But it is Groo-adjacent, I suppose: more work by the same people, with something of the same tone and sense of humor, aimed at a mostly young audience and telling a...let me say dependable story for them.

The book of Space Circus only came out at the end of the last year, but it collects a four-issue series from 2000 (for the first time, as far as I can tell). I have no idea why it took that long; maybe they just forgot about it for a while.

The story is written by Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier - I suspect it's something like their Groo working relationship, where Aragones could have done all of it, but Evanier polishes up the writing to make it all better throughout - and drawn by Aragones. Lettering is by Stan Sakai and colors by Tom Luth.

It's a story about running away to join the circus, basically - though this kid, Todd Cooper, does it accidentally and it's, as you might guess from the title, not an ordinary circus. It is in fact a galaxy-traveling space circus, the Doodah Brothers’ Astral Traveling Entertainment and Fun Brigade, which landed unexpectedly on Earth to make repairs after a run-in with pirates.

The pirate leader hates circuses, for the usual trauma-in-childhood-from-not-getting-to-go-to-the-circus reasons, and has a fiendish plan to take over the circus and use it to plunder the fat starships and worlds inside the otherwise impregnable Shield that protects Secured Space. All legitimate starships have a whoositz that lets them pass instantly through the Shield, which pirate ships can never, ever obtain...but pirates can steal entire other ships, which seems to slightly defeat the impregnability.

Anyway, pirates chase mostly oblivious circus. Circus picks up an Earth kid, who means well and is enthusiastic about helping out but whose lack of space knowledge leads him to make a series of unfortunate, large, and humorous blunders. Pirates manage to trick the circus to a planet where they can steal the circus ship, leaving the circus behind and using their vessel to plunder civilized worlds as if they were the circus.

And, of course, the kid is instrumental in the plan to use the pirate ship to chase the pirates, get back the circus ship, and bring the miscreants to justice. All that, and he's home in time for dinner, with his meatloaf not even having gotten cold, because of handwaved time dilation. And he has, of course, Learned a Lesson About Life - not to spend so much time on videogames, actually, and I am not joking here - as required by the form.

There are other characters, mostly of the goofy variety: that pirate captain, his affection-starved henchmen, the two-headed circus owner, various good-hearted circus folks. They all do pretty much exactly what you would expect of them: this is a fairly short story, so it only has time to hit the high points in its plot, and that plot will not be a surprise to anyone this side of third grade.

Aragones, as always, has a detailed, cartoony, energetic style, crammed with details and interest, which breaks out regularly into spectacular two-page spreads. He's not the kind of artist that the comics world thinks of as a superstar, but he can draw pretty much anything - as long as it's in his style - and do it well. I tend to think he spends his efforts on stories that are...again, let me say something like reliable or familiar here, but it's made for a good long successful career for him, and this is a pleasant, fun-looking book that can entertain pretty much any person able to read the words.