Alan Grant and Simon Bisley bring a bit of British class to the DC Universe, with the help of Keith Giffen, using their understated 2000AD honed style humour.
So Lobo eh? Exactly the sort of over the top parody of a cool, violent antihero that appeals to sixteen year old comics nerds as a cool, violent antihero. Got his start as a villain in Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen’s Omega Men, DC’s eighties science fiction superhero series set in the Vega System. He bounced around a bit and got a steady gig in L.E.G.I.O.N., the post-invasion series that was basically Hill Street Blues meets Legion of Superheroes, in space. But it was with the first Lobo miniseries, also by Giffen, Grant and Bisley that he really became popular. Lobo’s Back was the followup to that, but you don’t need to know anything about him to understand it.
The plot is simple: Lobo’s bored and out of cash so is looking for an easy way to make money. He bumps into an old mate and when he trades him in for the bounty on his head, he runs into an old flame, who hires him for a job on Dooley-7, to bring back a ‘client; named Loo. A few pages and a lot of gratuitous but cool fight scenes later and he has found him. In a fight to the death Lobo looks to have the upper hand until Loo’s brother, Feces, kills him in a surprise attack…
The rest of the series is Lobo fighting his way through an afterlife that’s a mix of a generic sort of heaven with some public domain, non-descript pagan elements to get back to life. He wants to be reincarnated into his own body. Heaven’s bureaucracy doesn’t allow that. Quite a lot of gory, senseless violence and several failed reincarnations (as a woman during the Blitz, as a squirrel just before he actually died) later he gets his wish. The end.
At the time Lobo was exhibit number one in the degeneration of modern comics, of how the post-Watchmen, post-Dark Knight grimdark trends were ruining superhero comics. Rereading this that’s just obvious bollocks. Even back then I couldn’t take these, the first Lobo series I read, serious nor were they ever intended to be taken serious. This is cartoon violence, Loony Tunes violence. There’s no real deep satire to it, it’s just Giffen and Grant enjoying themselves, with Bisley’s art — grotesque, gory, in your face, a sort of milder Kevin O’Neill –selling it all.
DC would bring out a slew of miniseries and specials with Lobo, usually written by Grant and Giffen before doing a regular series, which was a bit of a mistake to be honest. He’s not the type of character that can keep a regular series going after all, but something you should take in small doses. But that was nineties comics for you: if it paid to do it, it paid to over do it until the little fuckers get sick to the back teeth with it.
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