Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Naughty...

For readers on the Naughty list, we recommend a re-read of the 1992 Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special from DC, featuring intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo - the last Czarnian. (Unlike Superman and Krypton, Lobo was the last of his species because he killed all of his fellow Czarnians when he was 17*.)  

For readers with the good fortune of being unfamiliar with Lobo, he first appeared in Issue 3 of Omega Men as a villain in 1983, but was retconned into a very different character in the early 1990s.  The brutal, violent, crass, over-the-top version of Lobo was originally intended as a parody of anti-hero characters like Wolverine, but as is sometimes the case, the parody became its own new normal, and Lobo ended up as one of DC's most popular characters during the 1990s. 

The Paramilitary Christmas Special, written by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant and illustrated by Simon Bisley, stands as a representative Lobo adventure.  Hired by the Easter Bunny to kill Santa Claus, Lobo carves a bloody path through St. Nick's army of elves, after which he duels an equally brutal Santa with knifes, eventually cutting off his head.  

Now in control of the North Pole, its factories, and its comprehensive Naughty and Nice lists, Lobo converts the toy factories to bomb production, and circles the world dropping explosives rather than presents.

And a merry fraggin' Christmas to all.

- Sid 

* Well, strictly speaking, he killed half of them when he was 16 and the other half after he turned 17.

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