Writer: Skottie Young
Artist: Riley Rossmo
DC Comics, October 2026
Is it just us, or is Lobo becoming camp again?
In or shortly after June 1983, your reviewer purchased a copy of The Omega Men #3. This was Lobo’s first appearance, created by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen. Lobo was an alien bounty hunter featuring what is best described as heavy mascara, an orange and purple leotard, and a blow-dried bouffant. The character looked inspired by the late Tim Curry’s Dr Frank-n-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Or, as noted in this podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lobo-from-omega-men-to-the-main-man/id1775918614 “Lobo was just a weird side character who looked like he got lost on his way to a Motley Crüe concert.”
Lobo famously received a leather makeover at the hands of the late Scottish writer Alan Grant and British artist Simon Bisley in 1990, and thereby became DC Comics’ most famous biker parody. Lobo has a penchant for ultra-violence of the sort we see in 2000AD’s Judge Dredd. Mr Grant and Mr Bisley had both extensively worked on Judge Dredd, and brought a bit of absurdist UK comics culture to a mainstream American comic publisher, smashing, shooting, and causing gleeful mayhem with each comic book appearance.
And now of course Lobo has made a cinematic debut, in this year’s Supergirl motion picture.
Lobo #6 continues those zany, violent adventures, penned by veteran American comic book writer Skottie Young (see https://skottieyoung.com/pages/about ). Mr Young knows comedy, and knows his brief. Lobo has been commissioned to extract revenge upon the Tooth Fairy, who for odd reasons lives in a region called Tuth, located in Hell. This is not Lobo’s first visit to the inferno, and he is not welcome back.
Lobo growls, brawls, and blows stuff up all the way through to the conclusion of the story, as is his mandate. The most entertaining part of the comic is without doubt the rendition of Hell by artist Riley Rossmo (https://rileyrossmo.com/). DC Comics is ever-reliant upon its continuity to sell its stock, and so we see John Constantine offer Lobo a match, and in the background, The Demon blankly studies a severed arm with the Spectre looking on. But Mr Rossmo deploys plenty of sight gags designed to draw a wry smile. Here are our two favourites: Upon seeing Lobo, an avatar of destruction, saunter into Hell, a demon which looks like it is the purple bum of another demon complains that he has finished done renovations. The mind boggles as to how a butt demon can maintain his own residence. And as the elevator to Hell passes floor 616 (the standardised designation for Marvel Comics’ main continuity), Lobo deigns a sniff. It is droll, silly, funny.
But back to the swing to gay goofiness. In addition to the two very camp angels who with two golden “poofs” (really?!?) appear from nowhere to sentence Lobo to Hell for his latest assault, the concluding page to the story features Lobo with a new set of perfect white teeth, swivel-hipped, glossy hair tossing, strutting like a 1980s supermodel from a George Michael video. The macho aggression was a little too two-dimensional a parody, in our view. We welcome this transformation. (What next, a saucy team-up with Midnighter?)
