Lobo (DC Comics) - Fictional Character Biography

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 roughly translates as "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 the letter of his promises, 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 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; Ramona, a bail bondswoman/hairdresser; and Guy Gardner, cemented when Lobo came by Guy's bar Warriors where he gave Guy one of his Space Hogs and the skull of the Tormock leader Bronkk. 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). However, Dawg later appears alongside Lobo when Lobo goes to Earth to fight Green Lantern and Atrocitus. 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 with blackened eyelids. 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 as a long, straggly, grey-black mane, and more recently into dreadlocks. Similarly, the orange-and-purple leotard he wore in his first few appearances was replaced by black leather biker gear, and later replaced with both the robes of his office – as putative Archbishop of the Church of the Triple-Fish God – and pirate-themed 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.

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. 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 diner of Al, where he frequently flirts with Al's only waitress, Darlene. Though Lobo protects these two from frequent danger, 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 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 the 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.