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We talked about the growing in popularity of Lobo in the last article. Since its reformulation in 1988, he only had been growing in popularity, fact easily proved by the volume of magazines with main and special participations of Main Man. However when Keith Giffen stopped regularly writing the Lobo mini-series, by coincidence the popularity of the character stopped growing so much. The scripter kept helping (rarely) with Alan Grant in very few special issues. Anyway, 1993 was a year relatively good for Lobo, since his monthly magazine arouse in the very end of the year (the quality of the stories only had been improved about the seventh edition though). The problem of the route the things were taken in relation to Lobo was, according to Keith Giffen himself, the attempt DC Comics to make a sort of “free for minors" version of Main Man (so much so in spite of the violence, the stories of the monthly comic book stories can’t be compared to Giffen had developed until then in the series). Alan Grant kept creating good stories to Main Man (put him as special participation in the fun mini-series “Bob the Galactic Bum”), but the character already showed his image was becoming jaded. He definitively left of the L.E.G.I.O.N. in the “R.E.B.E.L.S.” magazine. #6 and his appearances in magazines have been getting rare. Even though, the main problem was in his monthly magazine: Lobo was getting and getting far from the “reality” of the DC universe. It’s not that a character like him is supposed to take part of the publisher “official chronology”, since its works very well in nonsense stories. However, the purpose of a monthly magazine is different from the special issues purpose (it was exactly the point most discussed by Keith Giffen).
Lobo kept with his monthly issue and
some special issues, but it already looked it was been sold so well as before.
The last straw came with the edition 82, of July, 1998, of the American magazine
about “Wizard” comics. In a one-page report, they criticized Lobo magazine,
calling it repetitive, boring and bad written (among other things as nice as
those ones – check out the original report by clicking on the image beside). Lobo still had a quick moment of "glory" in 2000 with the special issue “Batman/Lobo”, but soon after this the bad faded Li’l Lobo came, Main Man has been magically transformed in teenager and ended up taking part of some Young Justice stories. Lobo stayed with Li’l Lobo until the end of 2001, being, in a certain way, “humiliated” (if we analyzed what they were doing to his personality). Fortunately, they got hold of turning him an adult again (although it had been done through a very bad made excuse), however they replaced him by a defective teenage clone – Slobo, that doesn’t deserve comments.
With this new mini-series, Giffen guarantees he will bring back his view about Lobo, and also says that after reading the story, it will be hard for people to keep calling Main Man a “cute” character. We can only wait now for releasing “Lobo Unbound” to see if Keith Giffen will manage to make Lobo’s popularity grow again. And root for DC Comics “big bosses” to don’t end up making Main Man loose route again
text: Lucio
Luiz | ||
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Lobo Brasil,
providing indispensable to the internet since October, 29th, 1997. |
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Everything
that goes up, falls down. That explains anything you think of (even though if
you think about dirt thing). When we talk about popularity, the thing becomes
worst, because somebody is one day in heaven, could be in hell on the other day.
