The Four Color Media Monitor

Entertainment Weekly announced actor Jason Momoa's upcoming role as Lobo in James Gunn's new take on the DCU and Supergirl, and what he has to say about it:

The Aquaman star is officially returning to the new DCU, spearheaded by James Gunn and Peter Safran, to play a completely different character: Lobo, the galactic bounty hunter of the comics. The actor confirmed the news on Monday by sharing a snippet from a 2023 Fandango interview during which he called the figure his favorite.

“So Lobo was…I collect comics, and I don’t do so much anymore, but he was always my favorite, and I always wanted to play Lobo, because I’m like, ‘Hello? It’s the perfect role,'” Momoa said in that interview. "I mean, listen. If they call and ask me to play him, it's a f--- yeah. I haven't received that call, so I don't want to put any fake news out there, but if they ever call me and ask me to play, or ask me to audition, I'm there."

One must wonder why Lobo's his favorite. Because the ascribed personality matters, and while a fictional character can't be faulted for having certain villainous traits applied in a lenient sense, the writer is most certainly accountable, and those who came up with the post-Crisis premise Lobo would be a lethal assassin decidedly did not have a good idea in mind. That said, here's what they tell about the premise of the Supergirl film that'll regrettably draw from Tom King's writings:

Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) will direct the movie, which also stars Matthias Schoenaerts (The Old Guard) as the villain Krem of the Yellow Hill and Eve Ridley (3 Body Problem) as galactic warrior Ruthye Marye Knoll. Plot details are under wraps, but it's said to adapt the comic book Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, in which Ruthye, an alien girl, asks Supergirl for help hunting down those who killed her father and destroyed her world.

[...] Lobo, dubbed "the Main Man," is a muscled alien from the planet Czarnia. He always looks like he's going to a Kiss concert with flowing black hair, a black leather vest, and a "space cycle" he calls Spacehog.

Well in fairness, I do hope Lobo's actions, if the film follows the premise from the mid-90s, are portrayed negatively. Even so, I'm not interested in this upcoming film; the Maid of Might's been done too many injustices already as it is on the silver screen. And this article isn't clear about Lobo's exact origins. The Hollywood Reporter, by contrast, had the audacity to cite them:

Writer Roger Slifer and artist Keith Giffen created Lobo for the comic Omega Men No. 3. The blue skinned, cigar chomping alien has superstrength and healing powers, and has fought both heroes and villains.

The difference from the Bronze Age is that the premise there, at the time Lobo belonged to a race called the Velorpians, was more serious. Movieweb has more, but they say, rather questionably:

The original iteration of this character wasn't very interesting. Lobo failed to gain traction with both audiences and writers, and he fell by the wayside for much of the 1980s.

Umm, considering he only made about 6 appearances in the original Omega Men, and was little more than a guest character at the time, I don't see how this claim makes much sense or why it matters. Let's consider that back then, he was a villain in a negative sense, and hardly an ally to any superheroes. Which was why back in the day, it was better written than what was to come the following decade:

Lobo received a major refresh in the early 1990s. Comic book writer Alan Grant retconned Lobo's origins, changing his alien species from Velorpian to Czarnian. Similar to the original story, Lobo is the last of his kind. But in this version, it was Lobo himself who exterminated his race, not another alien species, killing most of his fellow Czarnians with a scorpion-like creature. This has since become Lobo's definitive origin story and will likely be what we see in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

What I wonder is whether Lobo's actions will be characterized as wrong in the movie iternation of the character's background, regardless of whether the screenplay is based on the writings of an awful writer like King. And if it turns out the screenplay follows the 90s premise to the letter yet takes a lenient approach to Lobo's behavior, then morality's been ruined.

In any case, I'm so weary of comic adaptations coming out all the time in Hollywood that I can't bring myself to care about yet another superhero film for the sake of the theme. One sure thing is that, no matter how Lobo's characterized in the film, the 90s premise is simply not funny, and I think it's a shame Momoa considers such a character "great" if his premise is built around distasteful ideas.

Labels: Aquaman, dc comics, golden calf of death, golden calf of villainy, history, msm propaganda, Supergirl, violence, women of dc