If there is a phrase to encapsulate the 1990s when it comes to comic books, that phrase would probably be “over the top.” However there were few character who embraced and ran with that notion with as much brazen abandon as DC’s Lobo. The interstellar bounty hunter with a bad attitude received a special #0 issue as part of DC’s Zero Hour event (I don’t even know,) and I’ve brought along guest Paul Scavitto to help me take a look at this one of a kind character.
Listen to Episode 4: Lobo #0.
You can subscribe to the Council of Geeks Podcast, home of 90s Comics Retrial on iTunes or on Sticher.
And now here are your choice samplings from Issue #0, written by Alan Grant with art by Val Semeiks.
If the phrase “just born bad” was EVER appropriate.
Ladies and gentlemen: our hero?
Lobo is his own cavalry.
The man knows his priorities.
Please check out Paul’s work on Armadillo Justice.
Thanks for stopping by the blog page, feel free to leave a comment. But before you go, I challenge you figure out what was going on in the minds of DC editorial when they decided the image below deserved to be called “Lobo.”
And for reasons beyond any possible comprehension, this is what Lobo is now like in the current DC universe.
The only Lobo stuff I can say I liked and still stands up would be the first three mature readers books by Keith Giffen and Simon Bisley – Lobo, Lobo’s Back and the Paramilitary Christmas Special. These were parodies of the 90s EXTREME! aesthetic, and the idea that Lobo should be integrated into the mainstream DCU (from which he sprang, in Omega Men, I understand that) wasn’t a good one and basically a case of many fans missing the point.
I didn’t read the ongoing, it didn’t interest me, but the few issues I HAVE read over the years tell me Alan Grant DID get the point, and Lobo remained, in his own book at least, a lightly satirical character, like a 90s DC version of Howard the Duck or She-Hulk, just not a great one. Putting a Judge Dredd writer on the book made sense, but Lobo doesn’t have a strong enough focus on anything but violence to be of interest for long. Somehow the series ran for many years.
Could be worse. Could be Deathstroke the Terminator.
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