There's really very little that Lobo gives a damn about. He's partial to drinking, whoring, ripping apart anyone or anything that strikes his fancy. Y'know, the good stuff the universe has to offer. There's his bike (yeah, you don't wanna mess with that!) and then there's the dolphins. Turns out the baddest, toughest, most violent biker brute in the galaxy has a soft spot for dolphins. Granted, they're awesome flying space dolphins, so you can understand his attachment. When Lucifer decides to stick a knife in one of them with a note telling Lobo to "call him", an enraged (and hungover) Lobo begins a trip to Hell to get payback on "Lucyfer".
Lobo is a fun character, and he doesn't get used that often anymore, so it was nice to see him get dusted off and taken for a spin again. Adding to that the fact that you get Sam Kieth on art and it looked like a fairly promising book.
Scott Ian (founder of the band Anthrax) has come up with a great plot for his first foray into comic writing, but then really drops the ball on the script and pace. It reads as if it was an outline that never got fleshed out and expanded; choppy, blunt and with a very jilted rhythm to it. Instead of dialogue it's more like a book full of statements. The flow ends up becoming the equivalent of "and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens...". Sam Kieth is also unusually large in the let-down department. Just like with the writing, half of the panels look like storyboards that were supposed to be finished but ended up being inked, colored and used as final product. Seems like a wasted opportunity all the way around.
Cover art to LOBO: HIGHWAY TO HELL #1 by Sam Kieth
Too roughly done to command the $6.99 price tag. Though it's a fun premise and Ian seems to have an understanding of the twisted delight that can come from a Lobo adventure, it still needed some more work done on it. I love the format of a bigger book but this one didn't seem to hit enough high marks to leave me feeling like it was money well spent. I'm going to grade this at a D+ and hope that Scott Ian keeps trying his hand at comic books. He's got the right ideas and I'm still curious to see what else he can come up with but he still needs some more work in nailing the finished product.
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