Lobo the Duck #1
Script: Alan Grant
Penciler: Val Semeiks
Inker: Ray Krissing
Colorist: Francesco Ponzi
Separations: Shok Studios
Letterer: Bill Oakley
Associate Editor: Peter Tomasi
Editor: Dan Raspler
Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras
Cover: Smith
Published by: DC
Released: April 2, 1997
I've written about my affinity for Howard the Duck before, but I have less experience with Lobo. The most I've ever read with the Main Man was when he got turned into a teen by Klarion the Witch Boy during the Young Justice “Sins of Youth” event and didn't get switched back like the other heroes. So he hung around with Peter David's teen team before being gravely wounded in a war in space. Each drop of blood spawned a full-size Li'l Lobo, except for one who was different. More restrained and sensitive than the others, he stayed on with Young Justice as Slobo.
I know the original Lobo is a parody of the x-treme '90s era and was popular enough then to be matched up with Wolverine in the Marvel vs. DC/DC vs. Marvel limited series that spawned the initial Amalgam comics. And that fight was... well, it was portrayed in one of the issues.*
Unfamiliarity and apathy toward Lobo aside, I was eager to crack open this issue, write about it and talk about it with Jesse Starcher and Chris Armstrong on an upcoming episode of the Unspoken Issues podcast.
The story opens with our title character making a rather suggestive comment to his absent paramour, Bevarlene, a cross between Beverly Switzler, who will never not make me think of Lea Thompson, and … (checks Marvel Universe Appendix Amalgam index) … Darlene Spritzer, who was apparently a romantic interest of Lobo's.
The Main Duck surveys a decimated Manhattan around him and lets loose an exclamation combined from Howard and Lobo's catch phrases: “Fraggin' WAUUGH!” Seems Howard had been hired by the Offending Society – a combination of the Defenders and Justice Society – to help them defeat an unknown villain who was destroying major cities. Foes we met in previous Amalgam stories, like Thanoseid and Green Skull, were just pawns to this enigmatic figure.
But Doctor Strangefate, Skulk, the intriguingly named Vikki Valkyrie and the even more intriguingly named Hawkhawk died in the massive explosion. Nothing's left of Dark Claw and Spider-Boy except their shadows, leaving Lobo and his pet/sidekick, the Impossible Dawg (Marvel's Impossible Man and Lobo's pet Dawg) pretty much alone in the blast zone, except for a man who identifies the villain as Kid Ley. With the fate of the Earth in his hands... Lobo decides to get a beer.
Lobo gets his beer at Al Forbush's Subterranean Diner, combing the proprietor of Lobo's preferred space watering hole and Marvel's... whatever-he-is, Forbush Man. There he encounters Ambush the Lunatik, who I believed was part Ambush Bug and part Lunatik, an obscure Defenders villain. But actually, Marvel has more than one Lunatik, and this one is probably based on Ambush Bug and Lobo co-creator Keith Giffen's more cosmic and comedic character.
Ambush is hunting the same mystery malcontent as Lobo, and when he threatens the smaller bounty hunter to stay out of his way, Lobo responds by beating him senseless, then … biting through his arm and... eating him?!? At least that last part was off-panel, though the arm thing was more than enough. The scantily clad ladies who accompanied Ambush are impressed and start showering Lobo with kisses.
An interlude takes us to Hi-Tek Gravity Labs, where some armored goons steal a gravity machine from two technicians resigned to their lot in life as expendable extras.
Bevarlene arrives at Al's and catches Lobo being, er, duck-handled by the two ladies, then proceeds to literally kick him out of the establishment. Lobo made it out with a supervillain directory, but it contains no mention of Kid Ley. Soon, he's accosted by the trio of Jonas Turnip, Gamorola and Billie the Millie. I'm guessing they're made, in part, from Howard's foe the Space Turnip, Gamora and Millie the Model, but let's see what the Marvunapp Amalgam list has to say: Space Turnip and Jonas Glim, a fellow bounty hunter with Lobo; Gamora and Shao-La, an intergalactic mercenary; and Millie the Model and Billy the Girl, another Lobo-adjacent bounty hunter.
Jonas knows who's behind the city explodings, but before he can spill the beans, he's brutally attacked by his brother, Daryl Rutabaga, who apparently has no direct correlation in the Marvel and DC universes. As they fight it out, Lobo invites Gamorola and Billie to, ugh, join him in “a game of sardines.”
Bevarlene tracks Lobo down to forgive him, only to find him in an alley on a discarded mattress with the lady bounty hunters. She beats him to a pulp again, and he decides that the identity of the mystery villain is somehow locked away in his head. An asterisked editor's note confirms he was the victim of an amnesia block in “Giant-Size Bat-Thing” #3, and Lobo finds the information he seeks by threatening his reflection.
On the next page, we get the information too: the mastermind is Gold Kidney-Lady, a mix of the Kidney Lady, who I'd forgotten from the original Howard the Duck series, and Goldstar, Booster Gold's sister, who seemed perfectly nice in the comics I read. Apparently she's on a quest to rid the universe of evil by cleansing improperly functioning kidneys.
Lobo arrives and opens fire, attempting to stop GKL from activating the Gravitoninoutometer, which is apparently the thing her Kidnoids stole from those poor, doomed extras. It's supposed to destroy the Earth, but Lobo's been paid to make sure that doesn't happen. Unfortunately, after he shoots Gold Kidney-Lady repeatedly, she falls on the switch and activates it. In a final splash page, the device begins pulling the Moon toward the Earth. A next-issue blurb teases the arrival of the Godthing to save the planet in a tale called “Don't Tell Mom the Bounty Hunter's Dead.”
First the good: I liked the irreverent way this literally blew up the Amalgam universe and tossed Lobo the Duck right in the middle of it. The constant references to comics that never existed were fun, as were the sight gags of the Impossible Dawg changing into various un-Amalgamated Marvel and DC characters.
On the downside, it didn't all land well. The clue of “Kid Ley” turned out to be because the wounded, possibly dying, man Lobo asked was in the rubble of a treatment center for people with speech impediments. Maybe this is partly because I'm the son of a speech-language pathologist, but that seems unnecessarily mean-spirited and I'm sure Grant could have done better.
I'm admittedly unfamiliar with Lobo but I never remember Howard being so over-sexed. Maybe it's because his original adventures came out in a more reserved time and under the sometimes questionable auspices of the Comics Code. I never did read his Max series because a) by the time I realized how great Steve Gerber's work with Howard was, I couldn't find it, and b) my extremely limited experience with Marvel's Max comics leads me to believe I'd probably be disappointed. For the longest time, I thought Howard and Beverly were platonic life partners, without much in the way of romantic feelings. That particular scene** in the movie notwithstanding, I don't really want to think about anything beyond that. Chip Zdarsky's treatment of their love for each other being much deeper than physical attraction made me reconsider the extent of their feelings, but there's nothing like that going on here.
Other than the physical appearance, this mix seems to be weighted toward Lobo. The crazy comedy of the best Howard stories is there, but not the extra depth that makes the fact that it's coming in a story about a cartoon-looking duck even more striking. Overall, it feels like a missed opportunity, although I realize I'm asking for more than could probably be fairly expected in a bizarre event one-shot.
Best Amalgam: We don't get to see much beyond charred, unrecognizable remains, but I'm intrigued by the Offending Society, particularly Vikki Valkyrie. Probably because a random issue of “Defenders” is one of my earliest comic memories, I've always been intrigued by Val, and the apparent mix with Vicki Vale seems wonderfully random. The possibility that Darkhawk could be one half of Hawkhawk intrigued me, but the Marvunapp Amalgam list says Hawkman and Nighthawk, which makes sense, but still.
Most Confusing Amalgam: Clearly I was lacking in recognition of a lot of the DC halves, but Gold Kidney-Lady is probably the oddest of the mix, I am sorry I didn't have time to reread the original material by Gerber to see if this iteration made any more sense.
* - For two hyper-violent, nigh-unkillable killing machines, it was pretty anticlimactic.
** - You know the one.
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