I'm not a Lobo fan by any means, although I did just recently buy the McFarlane Lobo figure since I saw it cheap--come to think of it, I think I was shorted his chain! Ah, I probably have one around somewhere. I'm not sure he looks right, or on-model today; at first glance this made me think if Lobo's heyday had been during Curt Swan's run. From 1990,
Adventures of Superman #464, "The Day of the Krypton Man, part 2: Blood Brawl" Story and pencils by Dan Jurgens, finished inks by Art Thibert.
Of course, this issue predates
his first mini-series, although he did appear on the cover of
L.E.G.I.O.N. '90 #13 the same month as this issue. This wasn't quite as svelte and polished as that New 52 version, but Lobo is much less biker-burly than usual today, even if he's still looking to pick a fight with Superman. With a teleporter named Raof and super-Superman fan Bibbo in tow, he senses Kryptonian presence in the South Pole; but Superman is actually just arriving in Metropolis then. Supes was late for a morning meeting, and having recently returned from space exile, he was wondering if he could still balance a double life. That is immediately complicated by Lois Lane inviting Clark to dinner, to catch him up on what he had missed. Uncharacteristically, Clark snubs her, coldly; then seems confused as to why she was upset. He then senses intruders near his Fortress, and changes costumes--momentarily seeming to appear in Kryptonian garb!
Superman is understandably not thrilled to find three drunks in his house, even before Lobo sucker-kicks him. (The kick just seems
wrong, though: too graceful? A Lobo kick would be more like starting a hog than any kung-fu.) Lobo thinks he's more than a match for the over-rated Man of Steel, and he might be right: with his brutal fighting style, he was dishing out more than Supes wanted to take. The fight takes an unusual turn, though, when Lobo gets into the Kryptonite stored there; and Superman gets into a Kryptonian power-armor suit: Lobo eventually wins, though, blasting the armor apart with missiles from his space-bike. Victorious, he then blacks out; as does his new fan Bibbo, leaving Raof to fly them away.
But, Superman was of course fine, and glad to see them leave; having used the armor to create holograms of his defeat. A technology he hadn't known how to use before, but could now...somehow. And still hammered, Lobo visits some aliens he had made a bet with, but his memory was understandably a bit fuzzy. Worse, Bibbo had been wearing his recording-goggles backwards, so he had been taping himself and missed the whole fight! There's also some subplot pages, with Ma and Pa Kent trying to cover Clark forgetting Lana's birthday; pretty obviously the influence of whatever Kryptonian macguffin was in play here.
4 comments:
I can't be the only person to think Jurgens' art looked better when he wasn't inking it. Thibert during this era & Rick Burchett from Jurgen's JLA run are my personal favorite inkers on his work. Breeding gets all the love, but Thibert & Burchett don't get their flowers very often.
I personally liked not just this era of Superman, but the Krypton Man as both a storyline & character, which of course led to the Eradicator a couple years later. I don't think he exists anymore after all those reboots post NU52.
I feel like the only people who have written Lobo well are Alan Grant and Keith Giffen- everybody else seems to not get the joke. Huge Lobo fan, by the way- picked up a big chunk of his 90's ongoing series and a couple of one-shots from a dollar bin recently. For me, the key is to getting him is to think of him like Bugs Bunny- the violence and innuendo are for comedy's sake and most of the characters and situations are satirical.
Precisely!
"(The kick just seems wrong, though: too graceful? A Lobo kick would be more like starting a hog than any kung-fu.)"
In all fairness, it had been mentioned that Lobo knows numerous fighting styles. 80s Lobo was less biker and more tough guy with a motorcycle compared to the 90s version. A pretty cool character who is able to hold his own, even while drunk.
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