Lobo #3 (May 2026)

This was my brain in the late '80s, early '90s.

Lobo #3 (May 2026)
By Skottie Young, Nicoletta Baldari, Jorge Corona, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by Jorge Corona and Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Edited by James Reid and Kathleen Wisneski

I get why people who are patriotic and religious get angry with me because I'm neither of those things. I'm sure they're thinking, "I have to pretend to be super into that shit or my peers will fucking lose it. How did you get out of having to live a performative life?!" Sometimes they try to debate me with their entire thesis being "You're a terrible person and I'm a great person because I am Christian and love the police and military and capitalism." But the thesis of my rebuttal is simply, "Okay. I don't care what you think of me. Goodbye." Is that a thesis?

I had a friend growing up who would constantly try to argue religion with me and our other friends, as if he were going to logic trap us into finally converting to Catholicism thanks to some helpful word puzzles from his hero, C. S. Lewis. Most of his arguments ended in, "Where's your faith, [my last name]?!", as if lacking faith meant anything at all to me and somehow destroyed all of my other arguments against souls or God or the existence of absolute evil or whatever other religious idea he was trying to launder through the eyes of his friends' logic sensors and belief in actual reality. As if by debating us, his ideas were just another set of equal views on the way the universe worked and not just a bunch of ancient dogma that has been used to control populaces for a couple thousand years.

So, yeah, I can understand that people who don't believe the things they espouse belief in would bristle at people who go about their lives not feeling the need to pretend in those things too. Sure, some of them actually believe that shit. But most of them, especially the ones in power (or trying to gain it) only believe in it as much as they can use it to manipulate others. They pretend they believe the things other people believe so those people will support them and they pretend to believe in those things to shit on and destroy anybody who doesn't believe them. One day, those people will all die out. I don't know when that day will be. Probably in a few thousand years because a lot of young people seem to love fascism, authority, and controlling things that don't affect them in any way at all. But one day they'll be gone because they offer nothing to the world but bad vibes, terrible takes, and abusive behavior.

I don't even care if people embrace religion for fake reasons or real reasons. The one thing which these people embrace that just makes me laugh at how huge a beta cuck it makes them is the police. Nobody fucking likes cops. NOBODY. Anybody who has ever encountered a cop has never been, "That was awesome! They really did a great job! What a needed role in our community!" I imagine the people who say they love cops must especially hate how free others are in their ability to state exactly what they think of cops. Cops are only good for feeding Wickermen. Whenever I see some poor sap flying a Thin Blue Line flag and that sap isn't a cop themselves, it fills my heart with glee that they have to live with that hypocrisy. "I love freedom and democracy so much that I want to pay a bunch of arrogant pieces of shit a ton of money to harass and beat and kill civilians!" Ha ha! Idiots.

Anyway, um, Lobo!

I love that Lobo's space pajamas are just his Omega Men uniform.

Lobo recently lost his job on a reality television show so now he's acting like he's a broke-ass motherfucker without any future. But he's still a mercenary, right? Maybe he's just sad that he's not going to be rich and famous like Nicole Richie. I'm super sad about that too. I mean that I'm not famous like Nicole Richie. I've stolen street signs, changed the letters on a fast food joint, and made a sex tape too! I guess I'm missing the key piece to her fame though: my father never fucking wrote "Hello". Stupid father.

Oh, I guess something happened to the Bounty Hunter Union when the broadcasting empire took over and all the bounty hunters lost their licenses. But some little twerpy alien guy drops by to give Lobo a psychological evaluation to kickstart the process of Lobo getting his license back. Psychological evaluation? For Lobo? To be a bounty hunter?! How can he fail?!

If I were fifteen, this panel would have instantly given me a boner. Now I'm 54 so I only have a boner in my mind.

I don't want people to think I can't pop boners at my advanced age! It's just that before I hit my late 40s, the boner drove the horniness. The boner was the beginning of the cycle and then the brain was all, "Oh shit. Let's do something with this! Why did it happen? Oh, fuck it, who cares?! Just stick somewhere warm and moist!" But now, it's the opposite. My brain actually gets horny and wants to get the sex stuff in and I have to convince my dick to join along. Oh, he joins along just fine (maybe not as staunchly and rigidly as before!) but he hardly ever starts the process anymore! I think my penis is just suffering from Weltschmerz.

The psychological test asks Lobo a series of questions in which his answers are mostly "I love fucking. I killed my entire race. I'm fucking drunk. And I don't really have any emotions other than lust (for food, women, and killing)." But eventually, the little alien dweeb asks Lobo about the first time he experienced joy that wasn't from any of the previous topics. And thus it's time for the origin story of Lobo's love of Space Dolphins! It's about fucking time!

I should note that even though I love the fuck out of Lobo, I did not follow comics for several years a number of times across my life. So if they've done the Lobo space dolphin thing at depth in some other place, I probably missed it. It's also quite probable that I just fucking forgot.

Miss Tribb is hot! Look at those gams! Too bad what eventually happens to them. Over and over again.

Little Lobo is so cute! Oh my god! I just want to cuddle the shit out of him! Also he's way cooler than all those other 4th grade nerds. I hope he kills them.

Lobo finds the controls for the aquarium and pushes the button that inexplicably destroys the glass and sets all the creatures free. I don't know why that button was installed. I guess for an emergency that I'm too unimaginative to think up. It causes Miss Tribb's panties to wad up really badly so she ends the field trip early. If there was a panel of her panties wadded up nice and snug against her alien pudenda, I'd have scanned it. So don't worry. You aren't missing anything!

Since Czarnia has no police or prison system because it's a grand utopia, nobody knows what to do with an anomaly like Lobo. So instead of murdering the little bastard because nobody knows what murder is, they call in the Pink Lantern to hug the violence out of him.

He's close to being the best lantern ever. The only thing holding him back is that I don't feel sexually attracted to him.

Lobo's memory of his childhood on Czarnia feels like a Conservative fairy tale. They love stories where the moral is "There should have been more cops." I love stories where the moral is "There should have been more Wickermen." That high school friend I mentioned earlier once had a class in high school where they split everybody up into smaller groups to manage an "island". They had to come up with some kind of budget to make their island a feasible nation state. My friend (Soy Rakelson. I've mentioned him many times before) and the jerks of his island spent their entire budget on a military. They wound up invading and taking over all the other islands which spent no money on defense. He was proud that the moral of his story was "The world needs more cops to protect all of the good people from me and these other assholes." Um, yeah. Cool, Roy. I mean Soy!

Lobo cuts off the lantern's ring finger, steals the ring, and terrorizes Czarnia for the next week with monster butterflies, devil flowers, and monstrous teddy bears. Eventually a Green Lantern comes forth to put a stop to Lobo. But that doesn't work either because the Green Lantern isn't Hal Jordan or Guy Gardner, men who would have beaten the little kid to within an inch of his stupid life. Instead, it's some weak jerk who takes pity on the child and chooses mercy over punishment. Lobo takes advantage of this and steals back the Pink Lantern Ring. That's the end of the memory because, I don't know, Lobo had no greater joy from not murdering, sexing, and drugging after that?

In the "end" (you'll get those quotes when you see the next scan!), Lobo decides he's bored of the psychological evaluation and just quits. He goes back to being happily unemployed.

What a windfall of Lobo ass this month!

The Ranking!
I love Lobo but I just feel like this series is missing something. Oh, I know exactly what it's missing: Simon Bisley, Alan Grant, and Keith Giffen! But that's okay because nostalgia is only good for horseshoes and hand grenades. I can enjoy a new thing that isn't the old thing that I loved while still feeling the feelings that I'm feeling where I feel like the new thing just isn't up to snuff! I'm a complicated and complex organism formed from multitudes of other organisms basically working together to create a meat shell that can sustain sentience! And if I can ignore all of that while reading this new Lobo, I can certainly ignore this isn't the thing I once loved and that death has claimed Keith and Alan! I don't think it will ever be able to claim Biz though. He'll probably kick death to pieces if it ever comes for him.

Lobo #2 (April 2026)

Goddamn that Lobo logo makes me so happy.

Lobo #2 (April 2026)
By Skottie Young, Jorge Corona, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by Jorge Corona and Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Edited by James Reid and Kathleen Wisneski. And I guess Paul Kaminski, too

I cannot believe that The New 52 decided to toss this logo into the trash in favor of that fucking nothing logo they used for "I paint French Girls" Lobo. Whoever was in charge of the redesign was all, "Our new Lobo is too much of a pansy ass cufflink wearer to ride a hog so his logo shouldn't look anything like a motorcycle at all. It should just be regular letters but with some spikes coming out of the letters! And the letters should get smaller as they approach the edge of the page to simulate that a child with no sense of space and perspective were drawing it because then readers will be prepared when they read the comic book and think, 'Did a fucking baby write this shit?!'" After seeing this logo, I needed to refresh myself with the awful experience of reading Twat Lobo #1, mostly so I could really appreciate having Lobo back in his proper form. While doing so, I noticed a comment on my review of Twat Lobo #1 that I hadn't responded to. It went a little something like this:

"This Lobo is more like how he was in Omega Men and Justice League International, back when he was a scary villain rather than the crap joke Simon Bisley made him out to be. I eat my own poo and find it delicious! P.S. This anonymous comment is not Cullen Bunn at all!"

An interesting take calling New 52 Lobo a "scary villain" when he was waifier than a Victorian girl with dysentery and had less testosterone. In the first issue of his series, he either shit or pissed his bed after having a nightmare. And yet I've never heard anybody complain about how Cullen Bunn made Lobo shit himself from a scary dream! How is that when I still, to this day, hear people moan about Kevin Smith saying a teeny tiny amount of pee dribbled out of Batman's peener after he stood too close to an explosion¹! You know another thing nobody talks about? Aquaman's priapism during Cullen Bunn's run of that loser! How does an artist not consciously incorporate a raging boner into a character's new look? It had to have been on purpose, right?! At least I already hated Aquaman when Cullen Bunn began writing him so that I wasn't disappointed at all. I was just all, "Hmm. This isn't Aquaman. Seems more like Cullen Bunn pulled an old John Carter of Mars script out of a drawer and replaced 'John Carter' with 'Aquaman'."

But enough about Cullen Bunn! Unless you want to see how much he hated me. Do you want to see how much he hated me? It makes me sad to think about it because I was having so much fun writing stupidly angry comic book reviews and he was all, "This hurts my feelings!" I probably owe him a beer or something. Maybe a Snickers.

Is that a still from Boondock Saints? Because it would make sense that Cullen Bunn would like the shittiest movie ever made!

I don't know who asked that question on Bunn's tumblr because I maintained a policy to never interfere with artists and writers online while doing my reviews, especially if I disliked their stuff. Sure, I'd talk with various writers who would reach out to me with comments, like Gail Simone and Sterling Gates. Or if they were generally disturbed by something I wrote and I noticed, I would sometimes reach out and apologize, like when Marcus To found a post where I savaged a cover he drew. But I pointed out to him that, at the end of the review, I was all, "I generally really loved this art! There's obviously something seriously wrong with me!"

This issue begins with Lobo getting his hair did for his new bounty hunter reality series for Space HBO.

Is this how haircuts work? I haven't had one in six years and I've forgotten.

On one hand, I think they missed a trick by not having one of Lobo's hairstyles be the Twat Lobo style. But on the other, much better hand, I'm glad they didn't remind me a second time of Twat Lobo, especially since I've already made myself sick to my stomach by re-reading some of my old reviews of that series. Can you get cancer from reading about terrible comic book characters? I'm so scared.

Lobo really seems to like the pompadour upsweep thing in the fifth panel but judging by the back of his head on the cover, he's going to get the "Dragonball Z".

Glancing at the cover again to take in some more of that Lobo ass-crack, I noticed that the title on the television screen (that I'm assuming, possibly incorrectly, is the name of the reality show) ends in a period. That's so uncommon that I can't think of one television show that ends in a period that wasn't an acronym like S.W.A.T. or Trapper John, M.D.. Exclamation points like in Just Shoot Me! and question marks as in Wiseguy? are just fine. But a period?! Come on!

On the second page, getting right into the thick of things as Lobo makes his first appearance in costume with "All New Lobo" in the background (possibly the actual name of his show and "The Last Czarnian." was a 60 Minutes story? Did those use periods?!).

Just like a television producer to remove everything great about a concept to put their own shit spin on it.

Lobo would rather wear his leather, jeans, and chains but a focus group suggested a superhero costume might work better. I don't understand why focus groups exist. I've come to the conclusion that anybody who would be willing to take part in a focus group doesn't know shit about anything. I guess the entire point is to get enough random opinions so that everything becomes sanitized and shoved into some median opinion that doesn't actually exist. If a few people say they love to see people die on camera, and a few people say they hate to see people die on camera, do you decide to just cripple people on camera which is something nobody said they liked? I think maybe I just don't understand focus groups. The only focus groups I've ever seen were either fictional like in Silicon Valley (was that one? I don't know!) or fucked up like in Impractical Jokers (again, are those focus groups?).²

A lot going on in the first panel of Lobo's new reality gig!

First, Slixton Blind is probably some kind of joke about the names of British towns. Or a sex joke I'm missing because, well, you know what? Never mind why I don't get sex. I mean sex jokes! Second, "brutanium" is meant to invoke the stupidity of adamantium or inertron or unbreakablygen. Third, how can a galaxy be "southeastern"? Fourth, the Main Man makes a timely '80s "I ain't gay, bro" joke. Fifth, Dawg has ripped his cape to shreds like any good animal put in stupid fucking clothes. Sixth, "Space Crime Alley" is a shot at Batman and his dead parents. Seventh, the glory hole³ has a tongue. Eighth, on this planet, gum is adult oriented. Ninth, I think that's Orko in the lower left corner. Tenth and final comment, I don't know if the purple mohawked kid with the katana on their back is a reference to something because I haven't consumed all pop culture there is to consume.

We discover, in the next panel, that Lobo's quarry's name is Brummer Jip which I'm sure is at least three slurs in one name: Gyp, Jap, and Bummer (as in a man who has butt sex with another man). Maybe "Brummer" is also a slur for somebody from Birmingham. One thing I do know: it was all intentional! Fucking Skottie Young! You naughty boy!

The president of Space HBO soon learns that Lobo ain't too good at following scripts and directions. So he blows the factory to shit when he's supposed to knock and declare his bounty hunter intentions. So they retake the shot after Lobo picks up the door from the rubble and knocks on it. But then he adds too many violent threats to the warrant and they have to take the shot again⁴. On the next take, he uses the name of the wrong advertiser so he's forced to go again. But one thing everybody knows about Lobo aside from how thick his luscious cock⁵ is is his lack of patience.

With an offensive name like Brummer Jip, I'm glad they're dead!

On Lobo's second bounty, we learn that Space HBO doesn't have an actual limit in the number of times a character can say "frag" or "fucker" or "cocksucker" or "glory hole". The studio just wants to limit Lobo's use of the word because he's supposed to be an "antihero" and not just a villainous swearmonger like he was in Omega Men or Justice League International.

It seems like Lobo's show is going out live but the director keeps yelling "Cut!" when Lobo does something he doesn't like. Maybe that's all part of the fun of the show! It's the reality of making a reality television show. It gets so graphic that even Atrocitus vomits blood⁶ while watching it.

A few more focus groups later and Space HBO has determined that what the audience really wants (more so than Lobo shoving blenders up bounties' assholes) is for Lobo the anti-hero to go after an actual hero!

Oh shit. He's going after me!⁷

No, no. He's going after Aquaman. Specifically, Cullen Bunn's John Carter of Mars Aquaman. You can tell because Lobo acts as confused as I was reading Bunn's Aquaman. You could tell I was confused because I kept saying things like, "What's this funky fish sunnofova carp doing all the way out in space?"

Um, it's also possible, being that I haven't been reading DC Comics in many years, that Aquaman now lives in space. Why? Who the fuck knows why? I still don't know why Bunn thought he'd be good out there!

Aquaman laughs in Lobo's face when he realizes Lobo's the star of a new Space HBO show called The Main Man. I'm beginning to get the feeling that Skottie Young got the okay from corporate to kill Aquaman. Or at least to have one of his hands⁸ cut off again. No way he's going to get away with laughing at The Main Man in his own comic book!

Luckily for Aquaman, Lobo's show gets cancelled mid-fight. Sure, I know Lobo's chest had been pierced by Aquaman's trident and Lobo was missing a leg. But that's all foreplay for Lobo! Aquaman was just several seconds away from being in a position where he could give himself a rimjob.

Back at Space HBO studios, Lobo learns a lesson about studios and their execs and how they'd seemingly rather fail than succeed because, somehow, it makes them more money. He throws the guy out the window, threatens the rest of the studio if they don't pay him what they promised, and walks out of the studio naked. I'd scan naked Lobo but, in all earnestness, I just don't want anybody else to drool over him. Go buy your own copy if you want to flick your Bic over my Main Man.

The Ranking!
Is this the best comic book to hit shelves in nearly thirty years? Um, yes? Duh!


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Or something. Fuck if I know what happened. Do you think I read whatever comic book that was in?!
² The Merriam-Webster definition of focus group: "a small group of people whose response to something (such as a new product or a politician's image) is studied to determine the response that can be expected from a larger population." How do people still buy into this shit? Why can't people be content for things to fail or succeed in the rigors of actual life? We hardly ever get anything surprising thanks to these Goddamned focus groups!
³ The term "glory hole" will get this review put behind a warning label on Blogger until I can request a human to review it. Then they'll hesitantly take a look at it knowing the phrase "glory hole" was used, click over, breathe a sigh of relief, and reply to me, "Okay, nerd, this is cool. I guess."
⁴ Also he says "Frag" too many times. I guess "frag" is space swearing and Space HBO isn't quite like Earth HBO. Unless, since this is the reality TV division, this guy is head of Space Discovery.
⁵ The focus group is suggesting I don't reference Lobo's cock, especially with the earlier use of "glory hole". I had to fire them. Into the sun.
⁶ I think that means he loves the graphic violence because doesn't he love to vomit blood on stuff?
⁷ Me! Grunion Guy! Beloved funky-shit-filled-ass hero! Son of a tuna! Sometimes in spa. . . oh wait. He said "son of a carp". Whew. I'm going to be okay!
⁸ On my first run at this thought, I typed "nads" instead of "hands".

Lobo #1 (March 2026)

I got the special edition which comes with lotion, a box of tissues, and a change of underpants.

Lobo #1 (March 2026)
By Skottie Young, Jorge Corona, Jean Francois Beaulieu, and Nate Piekos
Cover by KyuYong Eom
Edited by James Reid, Kathleen Wisneski and Paul Kaminski

• I excitedly walked down to my local comic book shop to pick up Lobo #1 and then sadly looked at the shelves empty of Lobo #1s for what seemed the saddest eternity. So I went up to the owner who shall remain anonymous¹ and said, "I was looking for Lobo #1 because Lobo's about the only thing that could get me back into buying new comics!" And then she kicked me in the balls, tackled me to the ground, and yanked my arm up behind my back and growled, "Say you like big dicks, nerd. Say it! Say, 'I like big dicks!'" So between my sobs when I could catch my breath, I cried, "I like big dicks! I can't get enough of them! Mmm, mmm!" And she was all, "Yeah, I though so. I like them too." And then she helped me up, dusted me off, and we high-fived over big dicks. But, sadly, she then said, "Our DC shipment was delayed." Diplomatically, I did not say, "That's why I stopped buying comics here back in 2020! Because you never got your DC shipments!" And while, intellectually, I know, at the time, that was Diamond's problem which led to Diamond losing their stranglehold on the comic book distribution market, I still felt like maybe it's not totally the distributor's fault if this is still happening six years later? And at such a crucial time as the day the first issue of the new Lobo series shipped?!

• So later I went to Cosmic Monkey Comics and they had fifteen thousand copies of every Lobo variant on the shelves next to fifteen thousand copies of every other new comic that came out that day and also they didn't tackle me to the ground or force me to declare my love of big dicks. On the other hand, the clerk seemed to want to get rid of me as soon as possible and while normally I would attribute that to my terrible social skills, it's possible that she was just rude. Also it might have been the "I like big dicks" written in Sharpie across my forehead by Debbie. I mean the owner of that unnamed comic book store.

• Peter never treated me so roughly when he ran the store! He would always gently take my hand and wink and say, "Man, I bet you like big dicks, don't you?" And then I'd blush and I'd giggle and I'd say, "PETER!" Then he'd give me my 25% discount which I thought was for having a subscription box but it might also have been because I liked big dicks. Who can say?

• Anyway, look at this! Lobo's back! I mean, yeah, I know he's been around this whole time. But he's back with a monthly series that doesn't star a fake Lobo written by a guy who hates DC characters! I hope Alan Grant is rolling over in his grave! I mean in a happy way because he's gotten a huge boner and he's trying to get more comfortable. If Val Semeiks were dead, he'd probably have a big angel boner too. But he's alive so his boner is pure flesh and blood like mine. And he must have one because he once said, about drawing Alan Grant's Lobo, that it was "about as much fun as anyone can have drawing comics." I stole that from his Wikipedia which I went to to find out if he was still alive.

• Speaking of Val Semeiks, I should constantly praise him to the ends of the Earth because while he was having as much fun as anybody could have drawing comics, I was having the best time of my comic book reading life because of his work on Lobo and The Demon. I can't thank him and Alan Grant enough. I should also throw Keith Giffen's name into the ring while I'm at it because, well, Lobo but also Ambush Bug. And his and DeMatteis's Justice League was the League I grew up on. Thankfully! Can you imagine if you grew up on the League before that and were nostalgic about Aquaman, Gypsy, Vibe, and Commander Steel?! How embarrassing for you!

• Am I stalling? I'm so excited but I'm also scared! I'm basically an old man now. Can my heart handle this much Lobo?!

There he is! There's my sweet, sweet boy! Singing about shoving a gun up somebody's hoo-ha²!

• Lobo begins his adventure by parking his space hawg in a No Parking zone at a space dive bar. An alien parking attendant³ points out that Lobo's breaking a rule. Lobo points out that the guy should go get medical help before he dies after he rips his arm off.

• Often, Lobo avoids killing people if he's not being paid to kill them. Not because he's "honorable" but because he doesn't like providing free labor. But ripping off some guy's arm isn't killing them. Just ask Batman! If the guy doesn't seek adequate medical attention before he bleeds out, that isn't Lobo or Batman's fault, is it?! It's the carelessness of the person who carelessly lost their arm without taken precautions against dying from severe blood loss.

• Also the guy called Lobo "a rejected wannabe Kiss member" and if there's a better reason for ripping off an arm than that, I can't think of one. Unless it's telling somebody they're a Bon Jovi fan. But that should result in the loss of two arms so technically I was right in my first sentence where I said "a better reason for ripping off AN arm."

Ha ha! Lobo's so funny and clever and hot and sexy and, um, good thing this issue came with these extra underpants!

• I'm only on page three and I've already had to use the free underpants. I'd better got get some more before I continue.

• While having a drink at the bar before he murders whomever he's been hired to murder, Lobo accidentally learns a little something about himself.

So is Lobo "Murder Mouth"? Are they watching a bootleg movie about Lobo's Paramilitary Christmas Special?

• Judging by the film, Murder Mouth is more Wolverine than Lobo. But also, is there really much difference? Except that Wolverine isn't hot and sexy or funny or charming or tall or interesting in any way at all? And Fisty Claus is some kind of robot Steve Urkel with guns.

• And then I come to a part of the comic where, well . . . I don't want to say I cursed God and threw my comic book against the wall. I also don't want to say I went for a long walk in the rain while kicking rocks and sad Charlie Brown music played. I don't want to say any of that because I don't want anybody to know that that's what I did after Lobo called his readers, "mindless guppies". The readers who made Lobo the #1 all-time greatest comic book character to ever exist! The readers who couldn't get it up for regular sex anymore once they saw his physique and charming smile and his way with the sex workers without having to picture Lobo naked and aroused. The readers who spent most of their youth punching random nerds because it's what the 'Bo would do! I mean, I wasn't one of those readers! Oh, I also wasn't one of the ones who couldn't get a boner from regular sex either (unless you count "coming in your pants and then not having a boner anymore when the pants were off and it was time to actually do it" We're not counting that, right? Whew!).

• I don't know why Skottie Young would put those words in the Main Man's mouth and try to hurt his fans. Especially the "me" part Lobo's fans! But then a purple pig-faced orc says what all the awesome, cool, smart, sexy Lobo fans were already thinking which is why they didn't curse God or go for a sad walk or search "how to make a noose" on YouTube.

That's right, Grimlak the Pustulent! Exactly what I was going to say!

• When Lobo calls his readers the '80s F-word (that's not a literal reading of what he said; it's a postmodern critique!), he's reacting to the bartender's definition of an anti-hero which is "a villain that kills and frags and various other nefarious stuff, but they make jokes while they're doing it. Then they shoehorn in some kinda honorable reason for why they're doing said nefarious stuff." And that right there rules out Lobo anyway! Because he never gets a reason shoehorned in for doing his nefarious stuff! That definition of anti-hero should have been saved for Deathstork #1⁴. That ladyfingers always needs an honorable reason for murdering and pedophiling! But not Lobo! Unless you call "fixing a typo" honorable?

• As Lobo beats up all the mindless guppies who liked Rorschach for all the wrong, dumb reasons and not all the smart, postmodern reasons, he tells his secret origin story. From the first mini-series to The New 52 and beyond. I guess that's part of the whole "All-in" thing? Everything that happened, happened? No more Post Zero Hour Continuity? No more Rebirth? No more Superboy punch? No more Doctor Manhattan, um, doing, um, what was he doing again?

Oh, come on, you metro twat! Explain yourself!

• I still like to believe that New 52 Twat Lobo was just one of Lobo's drops of blood that fell into a vat of mineral water as it sprouted into a clone. That's a pop culture reference to Heathers because I'm a mindless guppy!

• Lobo also describes a brief love affair that's pretty much the one part of his story I didn't read because even though I was going to read DC's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, I wound up not doing it. Probably because Debbie kicked me in the balls and made me admit that I wanted to be pegged when I went in to buy it.

He's just like me! I also get a crush on every woman I see in their underwear!

• The guy Lobo tells his life story to winds up being his bounty. But before he can say something witty and pop cultury like "Smell ya later!", his dawg barges in and interrupts his bounty hunting.

So what I'm hearing, Lobo, is that I can hire you to kill everybody who ever said that Boondock Saints was their favorite movie? For free?!

• I wonder how many times Jason Momoa, while in his Lobo make-up on the set of Supergirl, did the Pennywise dance?

• Now's the part where we find out why Lobo has a new series! What's changed in his life that's made it so he can have monthly adventures full of over-the-top violence and pop culture references? Full of space dolphins and space hawgs and space clown make-up? I hope he doesn't get roped into doing honorable things like that part of his life he forgot to mention where he was forced to do goody-two-shoes shit for Vril Dox. I guess if I were beaten in a one-on-one physical contest against Space Bill Gates, I wouldn't tell people about it either. Just like how I never told anybody about that time I went camping with my friend Soy Rakelson and woke up with Vaseline on my ass.

• Lobo makes a reference to Guardians of the Galaxy and I almost missed it because Lobo mentioned trash pandas and I — against every fiber of my being, every particle of my non-existent soul — squeeeeed.

• Just try to remember how most of what I say happened to me is a lie so that you won't embarrass yourself when you spread the gossip that I squeeeeed like I grew up on tumblr or cried every afternoon in college while watching Sailor Moon or, one or more times, masturbated into a sink. I say those things for comic effect! If you believe I was sobbing when I first heard "Rainy Day Man", you're certifiable! I'm super cool and tough and macho in real life. But that doesn't make for interesting or entertaining reading! It only makes for banging loads and loads of hot ladies! So if you need to spread rumors about me, spread that one! How I banged loads of hot ladies!

• Lobo goes after the bounty he's owed for the kill he didn't commit and learns that he's now an employee of HBO MAX.

• Why does it smell so bad behind my left ear but not my right ear? Do spiders shit behind people's ears? Can ears fart? Did I accidentally fling some shit up behind my ear while wiping my ass earlier?

• Whoops! Wrong window. I'd better close my journal and write in it later so that doesn't happen again. I'm just glad I wasn't talking about how wide my urethra is! Now that would have been embarrassing!

• As Lobo's finding out that Space HBO MAX wants him to star in an anti-hero reality show, he decides to have a double splash page where he pretends his hook on a chain is his dick and he's fucking the guys he's about to kill.

Simon Bisley would have hid like fifteen dicks in this art. I only count three in Jorge's.

• After Lobo kills all the security guards, the president of Space HBO MAX⁵ offers Lobo a deal to star in the biggest bounty hunting reality show since that one where that guy did bounty hunting but which I never saw. His name was Mongoose or Polar Bear or something.

• Wait. It was Dog? Just plain old Dog? Was it at least spelled cool? Or did he need it to read as "god" backwards? You know what? Never mind. I don't care. I've avoided knowing about that guy for five decades. I'll be fine never knowing about him at all.

The Ranking!
Best comic of 2026? Sure! By a mile! By five miles! By however many miles your weensy brain can imagine! Twelve, probably. If a better comic than this has been published in 2026, I'd probably have heard about it. I mean I've had heard about it and not told you to go fuck yourself because Lobo #1 was better. And since that didn't happen, quid pro ipso facto, this is the best comic book of 2026! Suck it!


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¹ I wouldn't want to embarrass Debbie or Excalibur Comics, would I?
² Okay, maybe I'm misinterpreting the term "jammie" here. He's probably just talking about loading a gun and not doing the most misogynist thing he can think of immediately on the first page of his new series.
³ Or some other kind of hall monitor nerd. Maybe he just loves rules and hates seeing cool people break them. Loser.
⁴ Which I'll be reviewing next!
⁵ As big a douche as the president of Earth HBO MAX.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 Annual #3 (August 1992)
By Barry Kitson, Mike McKone, John Dell, Jack Torrance, Peter Gross, Bob Smith, Jimmy Palmiotti, Gaspar, and Lovern Kindzierski
Cover by Mike McKone and Jan Harpes
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Raspler

• Should I make a list of the top ten comic book characters I'd like to fuck or would that make me sound too much like a huge anti-social nerd who too often thinks about having sex with fictional creations? Would a list of fuckable comic book characters be more or less weird than a list of animated insurance characters I'd like to fuck? Maybe if I actually fucked a real person, I'd stop thinking about fucking fictional characters that have no agency? Or would I just become the protagonist of Boxing Helena II: The Boxening?

• Shit! I meant the antagonist! Fuck! Did I just expose too much of my interior squidgy being by accidentally expressing that the main character of Boxing Helena was the guy who cut off Sherilyn Fenn's limbs and not Sherilyn Fenn?! I mean, I was joking! Ha ha! It was a joke! I totally understood Boxing Helena! Probably more than you did because I'm an introvert pervert who has only ever loved women whom I've projected my own thoughts and beliefs onto instead of actually getting to know them. Yuck!

• Anyway, that top ten list of comic book characters I'd like to fuck would include Lobo like seven times so it's probably not worth writing. Lobo drawn by Simon Bisley. Lobo drawn by Val Semeiks. Lobo drawn by Keith Giffen¹. Lobo drawn by Jorge Corona².

• Halo would have made that list when I was in my mid to late teens but now it would be just weird. Also, is she still in a coma? Because that would make it less weird. I mean more weird. Stupid squidgy interior being!

• Also, obviously if I made a list of Insurance Company cartoons, it would be Erin Esurance. I would fuck, marry, and kill her! Wait. Goddammit.

• Are there insurance company cartoons other than Erin Esurance? If they are, are they hot? Should I search them out on Deviant Art?

• The issue sort of begins³ with L.E.G.I.O.N. waiting outside the United Nations for a meeting. Maybe the reason was revealed in the monthly title. Maybe it'll be revealed here. For some reason, even though Lobo was in this series, I never fucking read it.

I don't know who this member is but she's wearing Brother Blood's belt slash loin cover-up.

• How many pages until Lobo defeats everybody and wins at comic books? I'm not sure why there's another annual after this and a final bookend Eclipso issue to finish the story. Once Lobo becomes possessed, Eclipso should have all the power he needs to accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish. Destroying the sun, I'm guessing?

• Lobo had to remain behind because, as you can see on the cover, he's missing a sleeve on his jacket and you can't go in front of the United Nations in a leather jacket missing a sleeve! Also he might kill everybody.

• Back at the hotel room where Vril Dox decided Lobo couldn't cause any trouble other than throwing the television out of the window like any Earth rock star might, Lobo decides to drink himself silly with L.E.G.I.O.N. member Scrawny. Is that her name? Scrawny? It's what Lobo calls her so probably.

Oh, no. It must be Stutters!

• Stutters isn't offering to fuck Lobo. That's just the conclusion that he and all the comic book readers leapt to. She wants to play Settlers of Catan Or whatever the equivalent to Catan was in 1992. Probably Trivial Pursuit.

• Lobo drawn by Mike McKone isn't on my list of Top Ten Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck because it looks like he was using Brett Michaels as a reference. No thank you.

• Oh, Ice would be on my list! Also Supergirl's bum drawn by Mahmud Asrar. That might be on the list twice. I wonder if Mahmud has ever drawn Lobo's bum? Hmm. Be right back. Gotta see if Mahmud does commissions!

• Fire wouldn't have been on my list even before she wasn't being transphobic in this issue.

I don't think it's up to you to decide, Fire.

• I have no idea which member of L.E.G.I.O.N. is Strata she's got to be either the caterpillar, the shiny bald one with the massive shoulder pads, or the red Schmoo. None of them are on my Top Ten List of Comic Book Characters I'd Like to Fuck.

• Vril Dox didn't make it to the United Nations thing because he's out on the town looking to buy a Black Diamond. I'm going to assume he has a solid reason for buying one because he's one of them Brainiacs.

• The guy who has the diamond tells Vril Dox "No" when Vril asks him if he can buy the Black Diamond. Afterward, Vril Dox and his partner beat the shit out of the guy's henchmen.

Um, what? It's you guys who didn't understand the word "No" and then resorted to violence. Am I losing my mind here?!

• Fascism to fascists is when they don't get their way. If other people's agency stands in the way of them getting something they want, they believe their freedoms are being crushed and think that violence against the person not giving them what they want is righteous violence against the oppressor. God, I hate fascists. I know! I can't believe I've gone out on such a long, scrawny, stuttering, dangerous limb to declare such an extreme opinion!

• Also I hate libertarians. They're just authoritarians who don't have the balls to do their own violence. The only State anything they like is State violence. But only if that State violence allows them to keep doing whatever stupid fucking thing they believe they have a right to do without anybody complaining. Creeps.

• Here's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1961) that has aged like the finest wine⁴:

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. "It's that part of an imbecile," I said, "that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."

• Mother Night isn't one of Vonnegut's most memorable works but it should be. I hardly remembered it after reading it in my 20s. But then I just re-read it a few years ago when I turned 50 and it quickly became one of my favorites. Especially in our modern era of fucking Fox News. The thing Mother Night most taught me was that Sean Hannity should be first against the wall in the coming revolution.

• The game Lobo plays with Stutters is Scrabble. Lobo plays "fragulate". Lobo is so smart!

• Vril Dox and his helper (Lady Quark in a wig, maybe?) retrieve the Black Diamond and then leave it in the same hotel room as Lobo. Even without having seen the cover, I know that's a bad idea! Lobo's anger, rage, and violent libido can probably activate the Black Diamond from several feet away! That wasn't a length of Lobo's dick joke but it could be?

• The first page after everybody leaves Lobo and Lady Quark alone with the Black Diamond makes me laugh out loud. Probably because I'm giddy from all the love chemicals spiking through my brain right now. If I knew how to make heart emojis in HTML, every time I typed L♥B♥, the Os would be hearts. Oh look! I do know how!

1992 and Lobo has mastered the manspread.

• Vril Dox was intelligent enough to somehow beat Lobo in one-on-one combat⁵ so we've got to assume that Vril Dox wanted Lobo to get his hands on the Black Diamond and become Eclipsed. He's already said as much by admitting to Lady Quark that their visit to the United Nations is a sham and that if they really wanted to visit Earth peacefully, they wouldn't have brought Lobo. So why bring Lobo? Why pretend to negotiate an Intergalactic peace summit? Because Vril Dox wants to experiment with making Lobo into super weapon!

• Lobo trashes the hotel trying to kill Lady Quark and Stutters. I mean Zena. Apparently her name is Zena. She can absorb light to make things dark and, this is the important bit, release the light she's absorbed. When Eclipso begins bragging about how darkness is his friend and darkness can't stop the God of Vengeance and "I love Darkness's dick, baby!", Zena thinks light might save the day and blasts Lobo in the face with a million, um, Kelvin? Moles? Parsecs? of light!

• Lobo left the diamond upstairs so once Eclipso's been forced out of him, he returns to plain old regular violent Lobo.

• The rest of L.E.G.I.O.N. returns in time to miss all the action. But when Vril Dox patronizes Lady Quark while she's holding the Black Diamond, she gets super pissed and Eclipses. Or she just saw an opportunity to gain a free beatdown and slapped some make-up on so she could blame it on Eclipso.

• Lady Quark easily defeats all of L.E.G.I.O.N. leaving Lobo to save the day. But not because he wants to save the day. Because he wants to get vengeance on the God of Vengeance for using him to get vengeance on Lady Quark who is currently the God of Vengeance. No matter what happens, Vengeance shall be venged this day. Unless the Justice League shows up to fuck it all up.⁶

How could this team manage to constantly out-fail a team made of Vibe, Gypsy, and Aquaman?!

• English isn't Lobo's first language so he probably thinks "buttheads" is a lot filthier than it actually is. I mean, it sounds pretty filthy! A butt? For a head? Gross! Or is that sexy? Damn, I think it might be sexy.

• Lady Quark gets away and Zena goes missing. She was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and his Ozymandias gang. Nobody apologizes to Lobo for assuming he was the bad guy because he'd beat the shit out of them if they tried.

• Finally having an intelligent person on the side of the good guys means somebody finally comes up with the idea to take the fight to Eclipso on the moon. It took a fucking Coluan to think up that plan!

The Ranking!
This was the best annual yet! That's a weird thing to say because it surmises that I actually likes some of the annuals and then this one was of even superior quality to those. And I hate annuals! Sure, sure. You can't really know if I liked this annual or not because Lobo was in it and I love everything Lobo is in even if it's terrible. I'll never admit to a Lobo comic being bad. You can't make me! Because, um, I don't believe any Lobo comics are bad! If I ever admitted to a Lobo comic not being the best comic, I'd be lying and that would be wrong. Plus this one had a really fucking great ending where it was all, "Only one more annual left and then the conclusion! You're almost done, baby! Celebrate by eating an entire cake!" And I was all, "Rmffleplumfgrr?"⁷


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Weird, sure. But intriguing!
² I mean, probably. We'll find out on Wednesday, March 18th, if I want to fuck that Lobo!
³ If you ignore the actual beginning.
⁴ Most of Vonnegut's quote age that way because when you can see reality clearly and have no agenda other than to communicate the truth of how things are, your words will always sound prophetic and modern. When you're speaking lies to manipulate people toward a selfish agenda, your words will die over time, if they don't immediately fall out of your mouth stillborn.
⁵ Which is why Lobo works for L.E.G.I.O.N. Keeping his word and being honorable is Lobo's biggest flaw!
⁶ I'm pretty sure fucking things up is in their charter.
⁷ That's "Yes, sir! Right on it, sir!" with my mouth full of half of a cake.

Justice League Europe #34 (January 1992)

This fight is still going on.

If Guy Gardner had left Lobo to do what Lobo was on Earth to do, this whole Despero situation would already be wrapped up. Some readers might think, "No way! Despero is way more powerful than Lobo!" But need I, as an impartial judge, remind those readers that Lobo is the fucking best and can beat the shit out of anybody, no matter what writer thinks differently and then writes a story where Lobo gets his ass beat? That isn't the fault of Lobo, the most powerful and sexiest character in the DC Universe. That's a fault with the writer not understanding just how spectacularly awesome Lobo is. I just can't see the logic of the Justice League members not wanting Lobo's help.

Maybe the way I do logic is faulty because I refuse to see anything from any other point of view than my own. I've been watching Fear the Walking Dead lately and in the second or third season when the father runs out of the Mexican vineyard locale to hunt down his psychopathic son in the middle of the night, the scene cuts to the morning or the next day where, I guess, he's been hunting him for hours. His feet are bloody and raw and it took me forever to figure out what happened. I was like, "Did he run through some glass? Did a land shark attack him? Did a roving gang of torturers grab him for an hour and slice his feet up with razor blades?" Eventually, I, a person who walks everywhere barefoot constantly, realized that was the writer's way of showing that he had run out in the night without his shoes and that's apparently what they think feet end up looking like after walking barefoot for several hours. I assure you it is not. But for whatever reason, the Fear the Walking Dead writers loved this aspect so in another season, a whole bunch of people get their boots taken and wind up with the most bloodied, messed up feet you've ever seen. Maybe in the zombie apocalypse, running around without shoes is tougher on your feet. Maybe I've simply trained my feet to survive the apocalypse better than most people. Like I said, my logic might be due a slight "not everything should be viewed through your own personal experience, asshole" tune-up.

I almost wrote, "Where was I?", but I know where I was: Lobo is the best!

Oh! Should I try to guess what line from Yeats' "Second Coming" Jones will use for the title of this issue where Lobo and Despero beat the space shit out of each other?! Do you think it'll be "The Blood-dimmed Tide"?! That would be cool, right?

Fuck it! I take all that shit back about my logic being faulty. I fucking rule!

My mom used to always get mad at me and say, "You always have to be right, don't you?" And since she was talking to an adolescent boy, she was right to take that tone because I was not always right at all! But I was quite adamant in thinking the things I knew were really the way things were. They often were not. Then in my early twenties, I had a girlfriend who once got angry with me after I was proven right about some disagreement we were having and she said, "Why are you always right?" See, she was angry that I actually was right all the time! But the only thing that had changed was that I stopped defending everything and only defended things I was pretty sure were correct. So maybe that made it seem like I was always right? Because I'd learned, after being a stubbornly adamant jerk teenager who was often wrong but wouldn't accept it, to be a lot more fluid about reality. I'd often say things like, "I think this is the case but I definitely wouldn't stake my life on it." But now as an adult, I'm always right because I have my own blog and you can fuck off if you don't like my opinions about how Lobo is the sexiest beast in space and Supergirl has the best bum across DC's infinite universe.

Sheesh, I don't even like myself now! Seriously, I don't fucking care about being right or wrong anymore. I think maybe all those whiny jerks who think kind is better might be correct. I didn't spend all those years reading Kurt Vonnegut and not learn a little something about kindness. I guess.

You all know my bravado is hyperbolic facetiousness filled to the brim with spontaneous whimsy, right? Does that come across in my writing? Because, really, I'm just a quivering blob of insecurity who can barely function in reality let alone on the Internet. My favorite place to be is on the couch with my cat's head on my cheek, both of us halfway adrift in slumber.

Last issue of "Breakdowns" ended with Flash, Booster Gold, and The Conglomerate about to attack Despero in an attempt to save Martian Manhunter. This issue will probably begin with DC having five fewer heroes than it did. That's how many members are in The Conglomerate if you didn't get the joke or couldn't do the math. See, they're basically amateurs and shouldn't be up against Despero. I'm saying they're going to die quickly.

Booster Gold, leader of The Conglomerate, yells, "Conglomerate, take him!" And boy howdy do they go at it terribly.

Why is Vibe's brother just massaging Despero's butt?

The Conglomerate are so bad at superheroing that even Booster Gold realizes, immediately, that they know fuck all about stopping a threat like Despero. Hopefully Booster Gold's force field has an infinite batterly life so he can simply keep his entire team inside of it for the rest of this issue. Or maybe they'll get lucky and Despero won't kill them because he doesn't hate them. Apparently he really only has hate for the Justice League and that's why he's on Earth. Because his hate must be expressed through an annoyingly long vocalizing process where he does nothing and finally, hopefully, ending with extreme violence.

Blue Beetle flies Kilowog, wielding a pocket-sized L'ron remote control to shut down Despero, into battle. What he does not do is get on the communicator to let everybody know there's a new plan that doesn't involve getting your skull crushed by Despero. Although the old plan of letting Lobo crush Despero's skull still seems like a good one! Hopefully the writers will eventually show why that's such a bad idea. Like maybe have a baby crushed in the fight which should make me change my tune and start screaming, "No! They should never have let the fight between Lobo and Despero get out of control!", but will actually just have me shrugging my shoulders and thinking, "Big deal. One baby. So what."

Judas Priest! We get it! You hate. YOU HATE!

Groot in The Guardians of the Galaxy movies has a larger vocabulary than Despero.

Blue Beetle lands enabling Kilowog to sprint into battle to save the day. He's surprisingly chummy with Lobo.

Why do I suddenly like and respect Kilowog even more than usual?

What story did I miss where Kilowog and Lobo became mates? I never read much Green Lantern at the time so unless I happened to see Lobo on a Green Lantern cover, I completely would have missed any issue with Lobo as a guest star. The above panel makes it feel like they were once college roommates who haven't seen each other for fifteen years.

Kilowog's device doesn't work exactly as intended. Instead of shutting Despero down, it replaces Despero's mind with L'ron's. L'ron now controls Despero's body and Despero's hate has simply dissipated among the residents of New York. So unnoticeable, basically. Manga Khan, watching from orbit, quickly teleports to Earth to take possession of his new L'ron-Despero unit, pay Lobo, and promise to Venmo some cash to help rebuild New York City. So all's well that end's well! At least with the minor Despero vs Lobo problem that had cropped up in the middle of the "What's going on with Max Lord?" plot line. It's all wrapped up nicely and not a single member of The Conglomerate was killed (which is disappointing). At least I got to gaze upon multiple panels of Lobo flexing his muscles and looking aggravated and enraged.

Speaking of Max Lord, he's now Dreamslayer and he's proper angry that Lord Havok was destroyed. His Extremists are well and truly dead so he needs a new army. Using his power (and probably a bit of Max's), Dreamslayer commands the natives of Kooey Kooey Kooey Island to destroy the Justice League. Not that he wants them to sail out and find them! Dreamslayer expects the League to figure out he and Max are behind Lord Havok's attack. When they do, they'll attack him on the island and fall right into his trap. Mostly because J'onn has really shown he's a terrible leader that nobody listens to. I guess Dreamslayer gets to be the final ultimate threat because there are only three issues left of "Breakdowns."

Justice League Europe #34 Rating: A+. The Justice League have now battled all of their major foes since this whole Justice League International began: the United Nations, Bialya, Queen Bee, The Global Guardians, Despero, Lobo, and Lord Havok. I think the only still living villains who they haven't had to face during this story arc (who can be categorized as villains and not reporters or cats or incompetent buffoons) are Starro and Simon Stagg. I guess they still have three issues to make an appearance!

Justice League America #58 (January 1992)

Lobo + Despero = Sexually satisfied and exhausted.

Rocket Red has been reduced to his helmet. That's usually a bad sign for Rocket Reds because it means it's time for the new Rocket Red to join the League. They've tried to establish Dmitri as a personality that stands apart from just the Rocket Red character but mostly he's just a guy with a Russian accent who gets English idioms wrong. That means he's easily replaced by the next stereotypical Russian in armor. Sorry, Dmitri, but there's just no room for a solidly fleshed out non-American character! Especially in 1992! We were still a very young country then and could only handle, intellectually, foreign stereotypes. Anything more complex and the American readers would think, "Is this character Canadian?" That's because the only complex characters we ever saw on television growing up were on Degrassi Junior High.

This issue begins with the most confusing line I've ever read in literature and that includes all of the things I've read by Gertrude Stein.

"Ugly one"?! "UGLY ONE"?! How fucking dare they!

I don't know what television would air a debate between a 70+ year old man and a penis but my penis has now challenged J.M. DeMatteis to debate about Lobo's handsomeness. My penis will fucking destroy DeMatteis!

I'm not sure I can stand this blatant disrespect for The Main Man. Certainly some level of subjective reasoning must be taken into account when we discuss aesthetics. But I also think we must acknowledge the objective truth when dealing with certain things and one of those things is the sexiness and attractiveness of Lobo. Some might consider his general look that of Space Clown or Glam Assassin. But we must also understand that even while they mock his general appearance, the gears are moving in their front bottoms to prepare for the Objective Truth they refuse to acknowledge in a public forum. I suppose I could agree that somebody finding Lobo ugly and yet still wanting to fuck him does not mean Lobo is not ugly. It just means that raw sex appeal is raw sex appeal and it cannot be denied. But even so, I will not forgive DeMatteis for trying to canonically label Lobo as "the ugly one." Even if Lobo is being drawn by Bart Sears this month.

The cover is by Chris Sprouse and it is subjectively gorgeous. I love me some bright comic book colors on stark white backgrounds.

I think I found the ugliest one: Bart Sears' Guy Gardner.

For some reason, Guy Gardner decides that leaving Lobo to beat up Despero wasn't the most obvious best plan. Instead, he decided pissing off Lobo so that the Justice League would have to fight Lobo and Despero was the way to go. Maybe it's just because I'm really lazy but I would love to have a Glam Assassin come down from space and do my job for me. Get to floor polishing, you stupid Space Clown!

While Guy Gardner distracts the greatest weapon the Justice League have against Despero, Martian Manhunter proves that Ralph Dibny is a fucking jerk.

Look at that! A hero who can stretch who has never once made their neck 20 feet long!

Technically Martian Manhunter can "shape change" but as I pointed out when I said "technically," he's really just a stretchy guy. Plastic Man might as well be called a shape changer. But maybe Ralph can't quite do the same things a "shape changer" can so the neck thing is all he really has. Oh, and the gross twitchy nose.

While Guy Gardner distracts Lobo and Rocket Red tries to lead Despero out of New York to prevent more destruction (although Major Disaster sort of took care of that already by destroying everything so that no more can be destroyed), Lord Havok teleports into the Justice League Cave to murder the Silver Sorceress. This is where I'd usually say something trite like "Luckily other members of the League are there to protect her" except the only members of the League still in the cave are Blue Jay, Elongated Man, Crimson Fox, Sue Dibny, and Catherine Cobert. Also there are the Injustice League which are barely worth mentioning and General Glory whom I wanted to leave out because he actually could be of some use in defending her.

Catherine radios for help when she realizes Ralph Dibny might currently be their only hope.

Jesus, Catherine. I thought you were the diplomatic one!

Catherine makes peace with her Lord when she realizes the only help coming is Blue Beetle. I understand that they're only battling one lousy Disney automaton but the "they" battling the automaton are the left over bits that the cat licks off your plate when you're done eating your Justice League International taco.

I can't know for sure if I filled my pants with baby mayo back when this issue was hot off the stands but if there was a time traveling betting shop that took odds on the various things that made me come in my underwear throughout my life, I'd probably put money on it having happened due to this page.

Guy Gardner and Lobo fist fighting in a trademark Giffen nine-square Brady Bunch layout? Yes please.

Other than Guy's ego and DeMatteis's need to increase the level of conflict and draw out the battle across more than one issue, it makes no sense that Guy Gardner tries to stop Lobo from defeating Despero. Lobo hasn't even caused any destruction in his fight with Despero. All of the buildings were already rubble thanks to Major Disaster! Lobo is a gift horse and Guy is all, "How are his teeth?"

That shield that saved Guy's life was projected by Booster Gold. Lobo turns his attention to Booster Gold and so I'm just going to assume that Booster Gold is dead now. I don't remember him dying but then he probably just got resurrected almost immediately, comic books being what they are.

DeMatteis finally reveals where Kilowog and L'ron will get the parts to create the control mechanism to shut Despero down using the collar around his neck: L'ron's innards! The little guy must sacrifice his life to save his adopted home planet and all his new friends. This is the part where I'd probably tear up a little bit if I had a heart or if I felt any emotional connection to L'ron or if my dick wasn't so Goddamned hard after several pages of Lobo beating people into pulp. DeMatteis should have timed the reveal better.

The middle of the comic book just seems like two pages of various panels with the Justice Leagues battling Lord Havok and Despero but actually it's a double-page spread highlighting how cowardly and weak the Injustice League are. The pages feel redundant because hasn't that been what 25% of the total stories in this series have been?

Aw shit. Cullen Bunn's tumblr catchphrase for metrosexual Lobo, "Sorry not sorry," has some support in regular continuity.

Guy Gardner returns the favor and saves Booster's life by punching Lobo into the bay. Coincidentally, that's where the rest of the Justice League are now battling Despero (and by "battling," I mean "getting killed by").

It's embarrassing for the rest of the characters in the story when Lobo is the voice of reason.

Oh wait. I just found a way for the Justice League characters to be even more embarrassed.

I can't read minds but I imagine Despero is currently thinking either "Yes" or "Who?"

Back at the cave, Lord Havok has Catherine and Silver Sorceress cornered and is about to kill them when reinforcements (of a kind) arrive.

Even in the middle of a life threatening situation, there's always time to call out sexism.

Take a look at Beetle's face in the above panel. Now you know why I scoff loudly so the people around me in the coffee shop where I'm reading my comic book can hear whenever I read a letter praising Bart Sears as the best artist working for DC (or even just a competent artist). I don't know what kind of bullshit aesthetics rule the mind of comic book fans and J.M. DeMatteis, but how is the narrator not butting in at this point to say, "Sorry, the truly ugly one is Blue Beetle or any regular human drawn by Bart Sears. And don't get me started on their hair! Although Lobo's hair seems to work really well with his style."

Blue Beetle quickly turns the ship around in the space between panels and blasts Lord Havok with the engines, reducing him to a pile of ash and burnt robot bits. It's the kind of heroic move I'd love to see more often. Like maybe in Detective Comics except with Batman in the Batplane doing it to The Joker.

Dammit! It's too late to get me to like Ralph Dibny, guys. But this almost worked!

Based on that last panel and the earlier bit in the "Breakdowns" arc when the Ex-Leaguers were adventuring together, I think DC missed the mark by continuing to have Blue Beetle and Booster Gold pal around as best friends. I might like Ralph and Ted's interactions even better! Sure, some would say it's the same banter and Giffen and DeMatteis don't really care which characters are speaking which parts. But there's definitely a subtle difference with the Ted/Ralph banter over the Ted/Michael Jon banter.

Lobo finally decides to stop going easy on the Justice League and just destroy them so he can get around to his real job of catching Despero. They should feel honored! Lobo is going to kill them all for free! That doesn't happen often, what with his solid work ethic and all.

I wonder why nobody has ever paid for Lobo to come by my place on my birthday and beat the shit out of me? I guess my friends just don't really care.

Justice League America #58 Rating: A+. Not only did this issue receive an "A+" because Lobo was in it but it also received that grade because Lobo was fantastic in it. He beat up several people and he had some good lines and he looked downright sexy doing it too! It's got me wondering: why am I reading these old Justice League comic books when I have a whole self-titled series starring Lobo?! I should read one issue every week or so, as a treat.

Superman: The Man of Steel #30

This is what the cover of this issue looks like in the bag.


And without the bag!

This comic book came with a batch of vinyl stickers (that's the generic term for Colorforms!) that you could stick on the cover scene. But just like any kid, I seem to have misplaced my Colorforms. Never mind that I was 23 at the time. Hopefully they'll turn up in a different comic book box because I'm really angry at the 23 version of myself right now. Fucking idiot. Why did he even open the sealed bag?! Oh, that's right! It was a Lobo story! I had to get as much Lobo as I could!

Lobo has heard that Superman was killed and came back to life. So he's come to Earth to kill Superman. I don't expect logic from Lobo but I'm still going to ponder why he's mad at Superman for coming back to life (which Lobo thinks is treading on his brand) and he's not mad at Doomsday for doing what Lobo couldn't. Doomsday's actions humiliate Lobo more than Superman's, at least from the Lobonian perspective that every action in the universe must be viewed through the "How Does Lobo Make This About Lobo" lens. But then I guess Doomsday didn't come back to life (at least not yet! I hope there was an issue where Lobo went after Doomsday when he heard he was back) so what choice does Lobo have except to kill Superman?

Come on! Both Superman and Clark Kent decide to grow mullets at the same time?! What terrible fashion trends descended on Metropolis that nobody questioned this?!

Lex Luthor is shown a few panels later coming his full head of gorgeous red hair so that explains that. Everybody probably just figured Lex set off some kind of super growth hair bomb during some dust up with Superman while Clark Kent was nearby getting the scintillating front page story.

This must have come out at a time when everybody was trying their hand at writing a Lobo story. Louise Simonson's tack is to make Lobo say "bastich" and "geekoid" a bunch of times. So a pretty good depiction of the character! Although he also responds to Superman's "Hey Lobo" with "Hey is for hor..." (he gets punched before he can finish) which wouldn't be on any Family Feud survey of "Things Lobo Would Say."

This is the part of the movie where all of the Superman fans cheer! It's also the part of the movie where I mutter "Bullshit. Fucking Superman can't do that to old 'Bo. So stupid" under my breath in the back row.

I don't know what Lobo was thinking when he let down his guard to get sucker punched. He just dunked Superman in a fountain and acted like he'd won the battle! He must have gotten some shoddy information about Kryptonians from his murder agent.

While Lobo rubs his jaw and compliments Superman's violence, Superman thinks, "Okay! Now that I've got Lobo's attention, I can reason with him!" Obviously Superman got his shoddy Czarnian information from Lobo's terrible-at-research murder agent.

Instead of reasoning with Superman, Lobo kicks Superman in the nuts. This is a good example of dramatic irony because when Superman was all, "Let me help you up, Lobo, and we'll talk reasonably about your problem," all of the readers were giggling and thinking, "He's going to kick you in your stupid goody-goody nuts!" It's also possible that I'm the only reader who was thinking that and I have nothing in common with the rest of you.

Maybe Louise Simonson was just too kindhearted to write decent Lobo dialogue.

My new theory on Twat Lobo is that he grew out of the tooth Superman just knocked out of Lobo's face. I know Brainiac 5 or somebody did some kind of scientific hoodoo voodoo to keep Lobo from regenerating from every drop of DNA he left in his path. But maybe somehow that one tooth didn't get the treatment! Maybe it had already died and was turning brown in Lobo's mouth and not really attached to the rest of his system when Lobo was dosed with the magic non-regeneration goop! But it couldn't rightly grow into a new Lobo right in Lobo's mouth so it had to bide its time. Or maybe Lex Luthor dug it up at the scene and thought, "I can grow a Lobo body to replace this new young clone I'm living in that's already losing its hair. Lobo has tons of hair! Look out ladies, L.L. Cool Lex is gonna get laid!"

Everybody in 1994 was calling themselves "L.L. Cool" whatever. It was just a thing!

I'm generally surprised Bibbo wasn't just off panel saying, "Geez! Why ain't youse two get a room a'eady!"

I'm the biggest Lobo fan on the Internet no matter what all those way-too-serious Lobo fans on Twitter and Tumblr say but I'm not ashamed to admit I didn't know he had pointy ears. His hair is so luscious and thick, why would I have ever noticed them? Also, what? Am I not going to stare at his crotch and ass most of the time?!

While Lobo and Superman battle, some aliens that Lobo pissed off on his way to Earth arrive. They zap Lobo and Superman with, according to Lobo, a "force-twelve disintegration beam." That sounds powerful! But it doesn't even faze Lobo or the Main Man. Oops! Sorry, Lobo! I meant the Main Man and the Remains of Superman! Does that work as a witty play on words? No, you know what. Don't tell me if it doesn't. I would rather live in my delusions.

Superman punches Lobo into orbit where Lobo crashes through the alien's space ship. Then Superman looks at his fist and thinks, "Oh yeah, baby. Daddy's powers are increasing." Meanwhile, Lois Lane feels a disturbance in her vagina. That's not a reference to Star Wars and the explosion of Alderaan. It's my subtle allusion that Superman's new power allows him to fist Lois so well that she orgasms in the past.

I feel like reading a Lobo comic book has reduced my mind to that of fifteen year old me. Although fifteen year old me would probably have been all, "Wait. You can get a whole fist up there? Why would you want to?!"

When Superman flies into space to force the aliens away from Earth, he's worried about how long he can hold his breath. But he discovers, thanks to a laser knocking the breath out of him, the after being resurrected, he no longer needs to breathe! His theory is that one single breath has so oxygenated his blood that his body is all, "Whoa. Slow down, dude! We're good down here!" My theory is that Superman is a fucking zombie.

On board the alien ship, Lobo finds himself battling a whole bunch of aliens who he's already fragged once before. More zombies! Does that mean Superman is allowed to kill them? Also, if we consider Superman a zombie, is Batman in the right to kill him as well? I'm pretty sure Batman's "no kill" policy has certain limits, like he can kill non-sentient creatures or reanimated corpses.

Superman helps Lobo kill all of the aliens but only because they are robots. Superman lets Lobo think he didn't know they were robots to gain some cred with the Main Man. Or maybe Superman didn't know they were robots and his zombie blood lust got the better of him? I suppose it's 50-50 which it really was.

Here we see Superman giving his tacit approval of genocide.

Superman: Man of Steel #30 Rating: A+. Look, there are three reasons a comic book automatically gets an A+ from me! If it stars Lobo, if it's written by Mark Russell, and if I was paid in sex for a good rating. This time, only one of those reasons came into play. But I can't wait for the day that all three of them do! Hey Mark Russell? When are you going to write a Lobo comic book?!