“Lobo comics never made sense. And they were the best when they didn’t try to.
For the uninitiated, Lobo was a DC comics character created as a one-off baddie who joined a team here and there, then grew into his own series.
Lobo co-creator Keith Giffen:
“I have no idea why Lobo took off… 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.”
Lobo spent his time in a few one-shots and short series before having his own title that ran for 64 issues between 1993 and 1999.
What attracted me to this book as a kid?
Well, it was fucking nuts.
In Infanticide, the plot revolves around Lobo being tricked to showing up on a planet populated entirely by bastard children he’s left all over the universe.
In another, a story about just how far a healing factor can go, Lobo is cut to pieces, consumed by snails, and then shat out. The pieces of him eventually reconstitute into man shape and then resume kicking ass.
The amount of violence was pretty crazy. The amount of sex was even crazier. I feel like the creators almost got away with something, that they made it so violent nobody noticed the other adult content. Kind of a switcheroo from the normal, where you can have a movie that’s violent as hell, but a sex scene? Forget it.
That explains what’s in Lobo, but not what I liked about it.
A brief anecdote:
In 6th grade I had an English teacher whose class had two doors. One went into the hallway, the other outside. She plastered a big sign on the door to the outside that said DO NOT USE.
I used it. Like, all the time.
In fact, I went through the outside, forbidden door, even though it meant I had to walk around the building, come back inside, and god help me, PASS THE OTHER DOOR to get to my next class. It was more difficult for me to use the incorrect door.
Eventually a detention was given, some gum was cleaned off of desks, and my door selection policy was refined.
Why did I use that door?
It wasn’t just because it was forbidden. And it wasn’t because I particularly hated this teacher. It was because I felt like it was forbidden for no real reason.
That, to me, has always been the attraction of taboo. Not the very fact of it being taboo. The question that taboo brings up: Why? What is it about this that makes it so taboo?
Lobo comics scratched that itch. Why was it wrong to read about a violent, insane, non-hero who cursed (sort of), killed, and was a total misogynist?
I think the answer would be that it might shape how I think. Shape the way I feel about some of those issues. And it did, to an extent. I’m not violent. I’m not insane. I don’t really figure on the hero/non-hero spectrum, but I can say confidently that I’ve never killed anyone and I’m no misogynist. So Lobo comics changed how I feel about those issues because it made me doubt the idea that exposure to taboo material will cause the reader to engage in the behaviors.
Even at a young age, I knew enough to know that the whole purpose of Lobo was that it was outrageous. If you looked at the pages and saw anything resembling imitable behavior, I don’t know what the hell would be enjoyable about this.
I ran out the wrong door because I was told it was wrong and didn’t believe it. Nobody bothered to explain to me why. I read Lobo because I was told what he did was wrong, and though I agreed that what this fictional character did was wrong, I didn’t see the harm in reading about it. So I opened those pages, like I opened that door, to see what would happen. Because, as I suspected, I was being kept away from something for no real reason at all.
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