Lobo (DC Comics)

Lobo is a fictional character that appears in the comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appears in Omega Men #3 (June 1983), and was created by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen. An alien, Lobo works as an interstellar mercenary and bounty hunter and is a self-appointed bishop of his own religion. Although introduced as a hardened, rarely-used noir villain in the 1980s, he languished in limbo until his revival as an anti-hero biker in the early 1990s. The character enjoyed a short run as one of DC's most popular characters throughout the 1990s. This version of Lobo was intended to be an over-the-top parody of Marvel Comics superhero Wolverine (in issue #41 of Deadpool, another Marvel series, Lobo himself was parodied in the likeness of Dirty Wolff, a large blue skinned man who drove a demonic motorcycle).
"I have no idea why Lobo took off," Giffen once said in an interview. Referring to the 1990s incarnation of Lobo he created, he said, "I came up with him as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine, hero prototype and somehow he caught on as the high violence poster boy. Go figure" Comic Book Biography: Keith Giffen, Newsarama, March 10, 2006 (cached)
==Publication history==
Lobo was originally a regular character in Keith Giffen and Roger Slifer's Green Lantern spin-off Omega Men. At that time, he was a Velorpian whose entire race had been exterminated by Psions; his origin was later retconned. After a well-received appearance in Justice League International, Lobo became a regular character in L.E.G.I.O.N. and its successor series R.E.B.E.L.S. In 1990, he appeared in his own miniseries, Lobo: The Last Czarnian, plotted by Giffen, written by Alan Grant and with art by Simon Bisley, which changed his origin story: he became the last Czarnian after violently killing every other member of the species.
Grant's humor and Bisley's art helped to make this four-issue series a hit, leading to many subsequent miniseries and specials. These include Lobocop (a RoboCop parody); Blazing Chain of Love (in which he is sent on a job to a harem); Paramilitary Christmas Special (in which he is contracted by the Easter Bunny to assassinate Santa Claus); Infanticide (where he kills his daughter and all of his other bastard offspring that she has gathered to try to kill him); Convention Special (a send-up of comic book conventions); and Unamerican Gladiators (in which Lobo takes part in a deadly televised game show). Lobo also starred in his own title for 64 issues, from 1993 to 1999.
Over the years, Lobo has regularly made guest appearances in other series, even in cross-company interactions with such non-DC characters as The Mask, Judge Dredd, and the Authority. During the DC vs. Marvel crossover series, he fought Wolverine and lost due to popular vote by real-life fans. He also appeared very briefly in the JLA/Avengers intercompany crossover and is shown fighting members of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, though the outcome is never shown.
In the Lobo series and miniseries, everything is excessive, from the main character's perversions, mindless violence, and vocabulary to the grungy color palette and grotesque graphics. He commonly refers to "do-gooder" superheroes as "The Big Cheese." Everything in the series is laughable (in the sense of being ridiculous, if not always amusing), even his profanities ("frag," "Feetal's Gizz," and "bastich";), which are used to replace vocabulary unwanted by a family-friendly DC and to satirize similar expressions in other comics.
Lobo has made a few appearances in the animated series of the 1990s/2000s-era DC animated universe. At one point, an animated series and video game starring the character were to be released, but both were canceled.
In 2009 Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and Sam Kieth collaborated to create "Lobo: Highway to Hell", set to be release in November 2009.Anthrax Guitarist Scott Ian Shreds DC Comics Hellraiser Lobo by Scott Thill, Wired, July 22, 2009
==Fictional character biography==
Lobo is a Czarnian (originally a Velorpian in the Omega Men series) with exceptional strength and fortitude. He enjoys nothing better than mindless violence and intoxication. Killing is an end in itself; his name is Khundian for "he who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it." He is also arrogant and self-centered, focusing almost solely on his own pleasures, although he proudly lives up to his word – but exactly his word: no more or no less than what he promised. Lobo is the last of his kind, having committed complete genocide by killing all the other Czarnians for fun (as originally written, Psions had exterminated his race, but after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, this was retconned). As detailed in Lobo #0, Lobo unleashed a violent plague (a hybrid of flying scorpions) upon his homeworld, killing most of its citizens. In Superman: The Animated Series, Lobo nonchalantly tells Superman the fate of his race: "I'm the last Czarnian. I fragged the rest of the planet for my high school science project. Gave myself an A."
Lobo's friends include Dawg, a bulldog that he often claims is not his when it gets into trouble; Jonas Glim, a fellow bounty hunter; and Ramona, a bail bondswoman/hairdresser. Dawg is stomped to death by Lobo in Lobo #58 in which he claims to Superman that the dog is not his (for the final time). His enemies include the do-gooder superhero parody Goldstar, Loo, Vril Dox, Bludhound, Etrigan the Demon, and General Glory. Lobo generally tries to kill anyone he's hired to capture, including his fourth-grade teacher named Miss Tribb, his children, Santa Claus, and Gawd. Simon Bisley's dark humor fits well within the pages of his artwork by having countless mutilations of background characters occurring in each panel.
Physically, Lobo resembles a chalk-white human male with blood-red pupilless eyes surrounded by black eye shadow-like patches. Like many comic book characters, Lobo's body is highly muscular. Although he was originally portrayed as having neatly trimmed purple-grey hair, this was soon redesigned to be a long, straggly, grey-black mane, and more recently into dreadlocks. Similarly, the orange-and-purple leotard he wore in his first few appearances has long since been replaced by black leather biker gear, which more recently has been replaced with both the robes of his office – as putative Archbishop of the Church of the Triple-Fish God – and seemingly pirate-inspired gear. His arsenal includes numerous guns and a titanium chain with a hook on his right arm. Extra weapons may include "frag grenades" and giant carving blades.
In addition to his ever-present lust for violence, Lobo also has a strict personal code of honor – he will never violate the letter of an agreement (he said in Superman: TAS that "The Main Man's word is his bond."), although he may gleefully disregard its spirit. Also, he is surprisingly protective of space dolphins, some of which he feeds from his home. A few have been killed in separate incidents, which he avenges with his usual violence.
Lobo frequents the business of Al, a rotund diner operator, where he frequently flirts with Al's only waitress, Darlene. Though Lobo protects these two from any harm, the danger of which is frequent, he doesn't seem to understand the distress caused by his tendency to destroy the diner. Al and Darlene later prosper due to Lobo's appetite for destruction; he destroys the city, except for the diner, leaving hordes of construction workers only one place to eat lunch. He also ends up destroying a diner Al gives to him as part of a birthday celebration.
The last of the relation of Lobo and the diner appears to be in the pages of Lobo One Million, where his last adventure is depicted. By the time of the action, he's already morbidly obese and working as a carnival attraction, scaring tourists into leaving their money behind. Then, a sexy client appears to offer him a last job: to find a legendary evildoer named Malo Perverso. At the prospect of a last well-paid job and a chance to score with the client, Lobo quickly agrees, and again invades the diner to use their Tesseract teleporter to reach his gear. It is revealed then than the "client" is none other than Darlene, who wanted to see him back in his prime rather than see him sink even deeper into sloth. After reaching his gear, Lobo invades the HQ of the JLWB (Justice League of Wannabes) and crushes all opposition in order to hack their files on Malo Perverso. There, he is attacked by Perverso himself, who then reveals himself to be Clayman, the team's shapeshifter, who admits he impersonated Perverso to get rid of Lobo. Clayman also squeals where the real Perverso went: into a black hole. Lobo, still eager to find his bounty, goes into the black hole. Ironically, due to Lobo's interference in a planetary conflict in the same issue, Al later gets a package through Tesseract for Lobo-which promptly blows the diner up yet again.
At one point, Lobo has trouble with a clone of himself that had survived previous misadventures. A battle between the two makes it unclear which of them survived. Some fans conclude that the original Lobo was the victor, since later in the series, Lobo removes a miniature radio which he had surgically implanted in his head some time before the clone fight, and only organic matter can be cloned.
The character has participated in several money-making schemes, such as being a priest and being a pop-rock idol. Most of these schemes tend to end with the violent deaths of nearly everyone involved. He has many friends among the bounty hunter world, though many tend to die around Lobo, either by his hand or at the hands of enemies he faces.
===Crossovers===
Lobo has clashed (and cooperated) with Superman. He has also encountered Batman several times, although one of these encounters was in Elseworlds continuity. He has both fought and teamed up with Guy Gardner more than once, helping him to destroy various alien threats to Earth. Lobo often visits Warrior's, Guy's bar, where he enjoys free drinks.
He fights Aquaman when a traveling space dolphin visiting Earth is killed by Japanese fishermen. He relents in his violence when he learns Aquaman also loves dolphins; he feels he cannot hurt a fellow dolphin lover.
Lobo also appeared several times in the pages of The Authority. In one such appearance, Jenny Quantum finds a comic book detailing Lobo's murder of Santa Claus, she experiences a fit of rage and confusion. She breaks the barrier between her dimension and the dimension Lobo inhabits in the comic book, and Lobo finds himself in a fight with The Authority..
In the two-part Lobo vs The Mask crossover, Lobo is hired for the sum of one billion credits by a council of survivors of several devastated planets to track down the individual responsible. His trail leads to Earth, where Lobo encounters the current wearer of an ancient mask. The resulting battle destroys Manhattan and leaves Lobo as nothing but a severed head, waiting for his body to re-grow. Big Head, convincing Lobo he wants the previous mask wearer, agrees to a team-up to hunt the "Ultimate Bastich" down. Big Head leads Lobo on a chase to nowhere, killing even more and blowing up a solar system in the process. Fed up with Big Head, Lobo uses a special "guilt grenade" to force the wearer to remove the mask so that he can use it himself. Lobo promptly kills an entire intergalactic bar full of aliens, and is sucked into a wormhole on his ride through space. Landing in parts unknown, Lobo/Mask heads to a single planet where, crashing the 400th annual Feel Good Games, he insults a king, and proceeds to kill numerous people. A crayon drawing left on his bike with the words "YOU SMELL" incurs his wrath, and he destroys numerous planets hunting down the one who drew the insulting picture. Waking up one day, Lobo finds himself back on Earth, and realizes the mask used him. Tossing it away, he proceeds to leave only to pass himself arriving on Earth- as it turns out, the wormhole sent him back in time roughly one month. He had been hired to hunt himself, and the alley where he dumped the mask was the same alley where the pickpocket would find it in part 1. However, Lobo breaks the time loop, literally turning himself in as he shaves the other Lobo's head and paints him green for the reward money. Meanwhile, Big Head, realizing that Lobo has broken the loop, decides to have fun of its own on Earth.
Lobo has also had run-ins with Hitman, Judge Dredd, Valor, Starman, The Ray, Deadman, Green Lantern, and the JLA, among others. He was also a part of the DC vs. Marvel Crossover event, in which he squares off with Wolverine... and loses.
In the Amalgam Comics universe, Lobo is fused with Howard the Duck to become Lobo the Duck.
===L.E.G.I.O.N.===
Lobo acts as an independent bounty hunter until tricked by Vril Dox into nominally joining his interstellar police force, L.E.G.I.O.N. However, he continues solo activity, which seems to often bring him to Earth and in conflict with its heroes. He remains loyal to Vril Dox after L.E.G.I.O.N. leadership is usurped by Dox's son, until an altercation between Lobo and Dox prompts Dox to release Lobo from his service. After this, Lobo becomes a full-time bounty hunter again.
===Li'L Lobo===
In the year 2000, a magical accident transforms Lobo into a teenager. In this state, he joins Young Justice and eventually accompanies them to Apokolips, where he is killed in combat. However, the aforementioned magical accident has restored his ability to grow clones from a single drop of blood, and millions of Lobos rush into battle against Apokoliptian soldiers, whom the Lobos quickly defeat. The Lobos then turn on each other, until only one is left; in the process, the surviving Lobo regrows to adulthood. His time as a member of Young Justice becomes a distant memory. An additional weaker teenage Lobo with yellow eyes remained, however, having hidden from the fight; he rejoins Young Justice and chooses to rename himself Slo-bo. Eventually, this clone begins to degrade, becoming blind, and degenerating to the brink of death. Before he can die, however, Darkseid teleports him to the headquarters of Young Justice One Million in the 853rd Century, turning him into a statue (but fully conscious and aware) in the process. Due to squabbling of that era's team, he is reduced to ashes before any help can be administered. When later Lobo meets Robin and Wonder Girl again as members of the Teen Titans he demonstrates no recollections of them or their history together, demonstrating that he has indeed forgotten his time as their teammate.
===52===
After an extended hiatus, Lobo reappeared during the year-long maxi-series known as 52 where he encounters a group of heroes (consisting of Adam Strange, Animal Man, and Starfire), who find themselves stranded in space after the events of Infinite Crisis. To everyone's surprise he does not kill them. Lobo professes to have found religion, becoming the spiritual leader of the whole of sector 3500, left in shambles by a still unknown assailant. He is the current caretaker of the Emerald Eye of Ekron. After helping the lost heroes to defeat Lady Styx, he brings the Emerald Eye to the triple-headed fish god, who agrees to release Lobo from his vow of non-violence in exchange. When told that the Emerald Eye is the only thing that can kill the fish god, Lobo blasts him with it.
===One Year Later===
Lobo appeared in "Deadly Serious" a two-part crossover miniseries with Batman in August 2007, written and drawn by Sam Kieth. In addition, Lobo has fought the Teen Titans and Blue Beetle in their respective titles in order to capture Blue Beetle for the Reach.
In the Reign in Hell miniseries, it is revealed that at some point in time Lobo's soul was sent to Hell (possibly after the death of his original body on Apokolips). Lobo's suffering was enough to power Neron's whole castle. Lobo was freed from his prison in a battle between Etrigan and Blue Devil, and went on a rampage through hell to seek revenge on Neron. In order to buy time to fully recover before battling Lobo, Etrigan stole Blue Devil's soul and informed him that he would have to fight Lobo to get it back. During Lobo's rampage he cut off Zatara's head, forcing his daughter, Zatanna to send him to the Abyss (soul death).
== Powers and abilities ==
Lobo possesses extraordinary strength of undefined limits. His strength, much like his other powers, varies greatly depending upon different artistic interpretations of various comic book writers. In some instances, he is depicted as being barely stronger than a human while, in others, he demonstrates physical strength on a similar level as Superman. Lobo also possesses superhuman durability, which varies greatly as well. Lobo is depicted, in some situations, as being injured by conventional bullets while, in other situations, he has the physical resiliency to stand toe to toe with Superman, survive unprotected in deep space, and withstand powerful explosive blasts without sustaining injury. He has displayed particular susceptibility to gaseous chemicals.
If Lobo sustains injury, his accelerated healing factor enables him to regenerate damaged or destroyed tissue with superhuman speed and efficiency, and little apparent pain. Lobo also is functionally immortal. He is immune to the effects of aging and disease and he has been banned from entering either Heaven or Hell. As such, even though he can sustain sufficient injury to be out of commission for quite some time, he will apparently heal from any injury, given sufficient time. For instance, Lobo can regenerate out of a pool of his own blood, apparently recycling the cells.52 vol.1 #20 At one time, Lobo could grow a copy of himself, possessing all of his skills and powers, out of every drop of his blood that was spilled. This power, however, was removed by Vril Dox, during Lobo's time with L.E.G.I.O..N.
Lobo possesses an amazingly developed sense of smell, which allows him to track objects between solar systems, as well as a separate tracking ability enabling him to track an individual across galactic distances.
Lobo is a formidable combatant with expertise in multiple forms of armed and unarmed combat. His favorite weapon is a large titanium alloy chain he keeps wrapped around his right wrist with a large gutting hook connected at the end, which he typically uses in hand-to-hand combat. At times, he also uses high-grade explosives and advanced firearms.
Despite his violent and loutish nature, Lobo seems to have a genius-level intellect in matters of destruction and violence. He can create complex virulent agents and the necessary antidotes to them such as the one he let loose on Czarnia, resulting in the deaths of the entire population in the span of one week. He was also able to scavenge parts from a destroyed time hopper and attach them to his own bike, producing a working time machine.
It is not fully known the extent to which his powers are common for his race or unique to him. In the miniseries The Last Czarnian and elsewhere, it is stated that the cloning and healing abilities are traits possessed by all Czarnians, as is the apparent ability to survive in the vacuum of space.
== Other media ==
=== Television ===
Lobo first appeared on the small screen in the DC Animated Universe series Superman: The Animated Series. In the episode "The Main Man", Lobo (voiced by Brad Garrett) has been hired by an alien named the "Preserver" to capture Superman and add him to the Preserver's collection of rare and endangered species. Lobo heads straight for Earth and starts firing his weapons in the middle of a police station until Superman arrives to confront him. The two battle all over downtown Metropolis. Unable to gain an advantage, Lobo leaves Earth to "take five." Superman follows Lobo into space, where Lobo lures Superman into a trap set by the Preserver. Superman is captured and placed in a specialized cage, so that the Preserver might preserve Superman as the last remnant of the Kryptonian race. However, the Preserver then decides to add Lobo to his collection as well, since Lobo was also technically the last of his own race, though due to his own actions of "fragging" his home planet as his science project rather than misfortune. Superman and Lobo eventually join forces to escape the Preserver and another group of bounty hunters, who had been pursuing Lobo to reclaim a prisoner. In return, Lobo promises to leave Earth alone.
Lobo briefly appears in another Superman: The Animated Series episode in which Maxima falls in love with Superman. He also makes a cameo appearance in the non DCAU show Legion of Super Heroes episode "Legacy".
Lobo eventually returns to Earth in the Justice League episode "Hereafter". Believing that Superman has died, Lobo wants to join the Justice League, insisting that only he could take Superman's place. Lobo seems motivated more out of ego and a chance "to bust heads" than any actual desire to do good or help others. In spite of his obvious violent tendencies and his lack of any redeeming moral virtues, the League allow Lobo to help them for a short time while they deal with a large number of supervillains running amok in Metropolis in response to Superman's apparent death. Lobo battles and easily defeats the supervillain Kalibak, primarily by piling more and more cars on top of him until he says "Uncle." In the end, Superman returns to the ranks of the League, and Lobo, his membership rejected, is forced to leave. Lobo has not reappeared since the League rejected him. Brad Garrett reprises his voice role.
As in the comics, Lobo possesses exceptional strength and durability, as well as his usual over-the-top arsenal of weapons. However, he never displays any of the healing powers or advanced senses that he possesses in the comics, although he also never sustains injuries as severe as he does in the comics, likely due to differences in television standards and practices. Lobo's gutting hook is used only twice in his appearances in Superman: The Animated Series episode "The Main Man," and it is not used for combative purposes. He mostly uses a crowbar for bludgeoning his opposition.
In 1999, Batman: The Animated Series writer Boyd Kirkland developed a new Lobo series for Kids' WB with artist Steven Gordon. The series never went into production, as the network passed on it in a last-minute schedule announcement that year, to the surprise of the production team. The series was instead adapted into an online cartoon.
===Webseries===
After the cancellation of the Lobo TV series, www.loboonline.com (now discontinued) was launched. It featured 14 interactive webisodes as well as several other features. The official website is now gone, but the episodes can be found elsewhere online. See the DC Animated Universe Wiki for more details. Unlike other DC cartoons at the time, this one is adult-oriented and filled with tons of strong language, gore and sexual content.
===Gotham Girls===
A wax statue of Lobo is seen in an episode of Gotham Girls.
===Film===
In 2002, Scott Leberecht directed a film adaptation of The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special as part of the American Film Institute's director's studies program. Andrew Bryniarski stars as Lobo, with Tom Gibis as the Easter Bunny and Michael V. Allen as Santa Claus. The film was made with a budget of $2,400, although many professionals donated time and effort. It premiered at the AFI in May 2002.
In September 2009, Warner Bros. announced that Guy Ritchie would direct a live-action adaptation featuring the comic book character. Variety described the premise: "[Lobo] is a seven-foot tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero who drives a pimped out motorcycle, and lands on Earth in search of four fugitives who are bent on wreaking havoc. Lobo teams with a small town teenage girl to stop the creatures." Ritchie was scheduled to begin production of Lobo in early 2010 and bring an "irreverent, gruff tone" to the film as he did with previous films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The studio was aiming for a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Ritchie left to work on Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) and the film is now a DCEU project set to have an R-rating following the success of Deadpool. It will be directed by Michael Bay and written by Jason Fuchs.
===Books===
Lobo is the main character of the novel DC Universe: Last Sons, written by Alan Grant, published in 2006. The book also features the Martian Manhunter and Superman as protagonists; all three main characters are the "last sons" of their respective races.
===Video games===
In 1996, Ocean Software was developing a Lobo game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. It was a fighting game, featuring many characters from Lobo's comic stories. A 6-page preview of the game was featured in the video game magazine Nintendo Power, Volume 84 (May 1996). As previewed, the game still had some bugs and lacked sound. The game was canceled before release. A prototype of the finished Sega Genesis-version has been found and a ROM image of it was released on September 15, 2009 by a Spanish Sega community. Lobo is set to appear in the upcoming video game DC Universe Online.
===Merchandise===
Lobo has only had a few items of merchandise released, most by DC Direct. The first was a 12" Vinyl figure sold at the WB Stores.The second was a plush Lobo doll. The third was a 6" scale action figure which came with a hook and chain, Dawg, his bike and a spare set of hands to hold the handlebars. The fourth, part of the Reactivated line, is the 6" scale action figure with a new head sculpt and paint job, with a new chain, no Dawg, no bike, and no extra hands. DC Direct's Minimate line will have a Lobo figure as part of its seventh wave. Mattel has also made a Lobo action figure (complete with gun, chain and Dawg), for the DC Universe Classics line. He was available exclusively at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, and then for a short period of time on Mattel's online collector store, Matty Collector.
==Notes==
==References==
*Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards
==External links==
*Lobo (fan site)
*Full List of Lobo's Appearances at the DC Database Project
*Lobo's secret origin on DC Comics.com
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Category:Fictional bishops