Comics Interview — Issue #099

TV writers Van Sickle and Mitchell, veterans of The Flash and Alien Nation, discuss writing the Lobo pilot script for CBS through Roger Corman's production company. They explain the challenge of softening Lobo's extreme violence enough for network TV while preserving his anarchic personality, arriving at a "heart" for the character via a retconned backstory in which he was framed for his past crimes.

Grant discusses writing Lobo regularly in L.E.G.I.O.N. '91 and the upcoming series-of-mini-series format with Giffen and Bisley, describing the book as a "psychotic farce" and entertainment rather than deep thematic work. He reflects on Lobo's appeal as a cathartic fantasy of total uninhibitedness and expresses concern that a TV version giving the character a heart of gold would betray the source material.

Bisley traces his artistic influences (Frazetta, Sienkiewicz, Frank Miller) and his path into the comics industry through Titan Books connections and early DC work on Doom Patrol covers. He argues that black-and-white line art carries more raw energy than painted work, and discusses his experience on Slaine: The Horned God as a creatively mismatched project before finding his ideal collaborators in Giffen and Grant on Lobo.

Giffen reflects on Lobo's unexpected runaway popularity, calling the character "the single most reprehensible character DC has" and expressing unease that many readers take the satirical ultra-violence at face value. He discusses the genesis of the Lobo TV project, a planned ongoing monthly series with a rotating mini-series format, and his philosophical stance on characters being adapted into other media.

Loeb (screenwriter of Commando and Teen Wolf) and Sale discuss their collaborative process on the Challengers of the Unknown mini-series, including their cinematic, rules-breaking approach to page layout and storytelling influenced by Loeb's film background and Sale's preference for bold black-and-white design. They address DC's decision to require them to strip profanity and nudity from the series after a policy change, and defend their revisionist take on the Challengers' history.

DAK recounts how he co-created the visual design for Marvel's Lunatik with Keith Giffen on The Defenders in the 1970s, and traces how Giffen's later work at DC on The Omega Men evolved that concept into Lobo, with Roger Slifer supplying the name.