This is a pretty good Lobo rant from @Coelasquid.

Mind you, I don’t really care about Lobo (for those wondering, he’s a …rather unique… DC character).  But clearly Kelly Turnbull does.

A design DC reported was the New And Improved Lobo that basically amounted to Nightwing with fish barbels painted at the corners of his mouth made the rounds a few days ago to extreme internet backlash resulting in a great deal of backpedalling on DC’s part and the author claiming that the design DC posted was not in fact her Lobo, assuring people he would be much bigger and uglier in the comic.

Of course she’s also said; “My goal for him was to make him less comically hyper-masculine and more focused. He’s still vicious, still savage and still entirely immoral, but I wanted a gravity out of the character. When he showed up, I didn’t want him walking away from explosions and smoking a cigar. When he shows up, I want people to feel like, ‘This is it. This is the end.’” Which kind of says to me she doesn’t really understand what people are taking issue with. The redesign isn’t the issue, Lobo’s been redesigned a million times. He’s been a skinny kid, he’s been a woman, he’s been a squirrel, he’s been a duck, he’s been an android (he was a poorly received serious character when he started out), the problem is the idea that they’re promising to take the hypermasculine comedy out of a hypermasculine satire character. That’s like saying you like the Venture Brothers but wish it didn’t have all those pesky jokes and parodies in it.

I think that comics companies need to accept something.  They can legitimately expect that people be allowed to take comics seriously, as in treating comics as legitimate art – which comics are, in fact.  But comics are never going to be respectable.  And the people that look down their noses so at a standard Mark One Lobo are also the people who wouldn’t buy the ‘updated,’ ‘edgier’ Lobo if you put a gun to their head.  So this is one case where you might as well just Embrace the Cheese.

7 thoughts on “This is a pretty good Lobo rant from @Coelasquid.”

  2. Yeah, this sounds like a bad idea. Like remaking Blazing Transfer Student into a sedate slice of life about toddlers eating bugs or something.
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    Yes, Lobo could be powered up to Tsurugi Momotarou, or even Edajima Heihachi, Principal of Otokojuku levels, but that would require far more discipline than DC (or Marvel) is capable of. They should probably resign themselves to being second or third rate, and stick to their core competencies.
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    I’d suggest that if they want to do anything novel, that they may want just do crossovers with Bobobo. That said, I’m clearly full of it by this point.
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    Archive binging on Manly guys.

      1. Probably not. /If/ we go by manga rather than anime continuity. The stuff the author pulled off recently involves foreshadowing that goes back to the earliest chapters.* That took, I think, a single team working to a set master plan for the whole period. This works with how Shonen Jump does such things, but the impression I get is that Marvel and DC are unlikely to work that way.
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        If they worked at it, they could probably restructure or partway restructure to allow long term independent titles, ala Shonen Jump. Thing is, that would, probably, not let them bring over appeal from fans of their other properties, and would likely seem very risky from a business perspective.
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        I figure the market isn’t expecting such, it might get canceled early if it is American businessman estimating the American market, and it would probably be filler arc grade when it gets rolled into the rest of the setting.
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        Bleach will be over at some point, and isn’t expected to be able to survive decades into the future, in a shared universe run by a series of different people. Different ways of selling the stories, and different expectations about how the stories will be told. (Or telling and sold.) Plus, organizations are often not interchangeable widgets. (Baen)
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        *Apparently, they started with a coherent theory of how Ichigo’s powers work, their origin, and their limits.

        1. Oh, they’ve both done it, Marvel with The Walt Simonson Thor arc, and DC with the Phantom Stranger. Alas, the market enjoys Lobo and Wolverine more…..

          1. I dunno. Simonson, per wiki, did that for four years or so. Wiki also suggests a rate of around 32 pages per month. That doesn’t seem quite enough for the long pay off foreshadowing/mindscrew that Kubo Tite pulled off recently.
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            I don’t quite see how the Phantom Stranger compares to Ichigo. The universe seems shared, per wiki, the mentality and M.O. seem very different. Plus, that is not a character that seems to have much to do with power ups. Phantom Stranger, if he is like anyone in Bleach, seems more like Urahara.
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            Ichigo is essentially something like a hero of highschool fighting manga who gets a magical girl/mahou shojo power set. He can do many of the things that a hero of the one genre, or a heroine of the other might be capable of. So, reading hearts, helping opponents solve their emotional problems, power of friendship, that sort of thing. All that might be part of why the cast ended up the size it is.
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            I can see an American comic universe being able to tolerate a fighting manga/mahou shojo hybrid character. 1) I dunno about the creators and audience being saturated enough in the genres to make it as workable as it might be in Japan. 2) In the current climate, I doubt they would be able to resist the urge to dwell on questions of gender identity and sexuality. Ichigo is a girl’s name after all.
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            DC or Marvel probably could do a fairly competent execution of a fighting manga if they wanted. The casts of their main universes might be a bit filled out for regular tournament arcs, but it would hardly be the worst decision they’ve made.
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            Likewise, a proper magical girl may well operate by helping people resolve their issues. Having one make a measurable difference in the lives of much of the greater DC or Marvel cast might not be useful, on net. I think one built correctly would be hilarious dealing with Punisher or Lobo.

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