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Let’s be honest: Lobo is a violent character, his stories are politically incorrect, his acts are censurable. He represents, as a DC character, everything from what we try to escape in real life. So, how to like him? In a simplistic manner, we could say in the sentence itself the explanation is. After all, Lobo is a comics character. Fiction. Therefore, what he does in the comics has nothing to do with the real life.
Such violent character as Lobo having fans and sympathizers is not something so uncommon nowadays. Not only the comics but also the cinema, the literature and other forms of art have been bringing for a long time which it conventionated to call anti-heroes. The perfect hero stereotype that always does everything for others isn’t a rule anymore. The Batman himself, who has already so “cute”, now he is gloomy, psychotic and violent. Neither in telesoaps we find more "perfect" lovers (with the exception of some Mexican soap operas, but it isn’t relevant). The fact that a character isn’t perfect makes sense, since nobody is perfect (what an uncreative sentence!), but characters who, besides not being perfect moreover practically only have defects, is considerably different. By the way, another doubt can be arisen: Wouldn’t Lobo actually be a villain? The answer, in principle, is “no”. Main Man is an anti-hero. To nullify any doubt concerning the real meaning of this term, we can look in the dictionary: “Anti-hero: Novel, film, drama play, etc main character, to whom physical features or the virtues attributed to a classical hero are absent”. Exactly what we can say about Lobo, Hitman, Catwoman, Preacher, Groo, Garfiel, Dilbert, Homer Simpson, besides thousands of other examples. Is Lobo funny? Yes. Is he funny because he is violent? Not necessarily. There are a lot of stories where Lobo isn’t exactly "violent" (in the sense of drawing, killing and tormenting everybody), but even so he is funny because of his personality. In compensation, there are several stories where he is extremely violent (in the sense already exemplified) and as it’s so gratuitous, it isn’t funny.
What makes the stories be fun is exactly his lack of commitment to being a straight person. On a good scripter hands, preferably of the one who has very keen cynical vein, a character like Lobo has several possibilities for the critical stories development about the complicated reality we live in. Or simply like a good way to tell jokes. Nobody needs to feel guilty of liking Lobo, neither needs to worry about the fact of being able to become an intemperate person, a sociopath or a psychopath. After all, there is no accounts in which a person had become violent looking at Jerry shooting with a rifle at the Tom’s muzzle or looking at Woody Woodpecker using an ax to cut the Zeca Urubu's head off.
It is possible to like Lobo and at the same time be a normal person. Although it has never been registered a single case of a 100% normal person who likes Main Man...
text: Lucio
Luiz | ||
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Lobo Brasil,
providing indispensable to the internet since October, 29th, 1997. |
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From
now on, every first Sunday of each month (when it’s possible, of course), we
will be publicizing an article in the “Lobo Brasil” site. With these articles we
will try to discuss about subjects related to the character, his development and
everything he represents (although saying “non-sense” things once in a while,
doesn’t hurt anybody). In this first article, we will discuss about a very
simple theme, even silly, but curious in a certain way: How is it possible to
like Lobo?
But it’s not exactly like
this.
As we can see, it isn’t that difficult to
like Lobo. Actually, we usually see people who like him instead of people who
simply hate him. There are still those who like Lobo in the solo stories which
don’t worry about the chronology, but don’t like when he is a secondary
character in other magazines. But if we think so, there are also lots of people
who “love” or “hate” Superman, which isn’t a merit.
What does matter is to like
Lobo because of "straight" reasons, because he is a funny character and his
stories are interesting. If somebody likes Lobo as an example of attitude for
the real life, this person should be urgently confined in a mental illness
clinic. The history of the medicine shows people with violent tendencies only
need an "excuse" to start in this characteristic. A more recent example perhaps
is the one of the girls who was murdered by colleagues who apparently were
inspired in a RPG. In this case, the game itself didn’t make anybody violent,
but the extrapolation of the fiction for the reality did.