Review by Frank Plowright

Having generated a surprising success from promoting Lobo from supporting character to headliner in 1990 via what was collected as The Last Czarnian, DC hoped to build on that success and have lightning strike a second time. It didn’t.

The rather convoluted title is a joke now buried in the 1990s because when published as serialised comics they were titled Lobo’s Back, a joke underlined by each cover picturing Lobo from behind. The creative team was also back, with Alan Grant providing dialogue for Keith Giffen’s plots, and Simon Bisley drawing from Giffen’s layouts. Lobo’s severed his ties with Vril Dox, but the terms of separation mean he can’t kill for money and funds are running short.

It all starts well enough with all three creators on form as Lobo signs up to be a bounty hunter, confident he’s tough enough to bring in his assignments alive. He’s placed in a series of ridiculous situations, and DC have decided to let Bisley off the leash, so the violence is considerably more graphic and funnier. There are even places where Bisley seems to have been looking at the art of Bill Sienkiewicz, which is strange to see.

The problem, though, is the plot then takes Lobo into the afterlife for sequences that fail to hit the spot for either just packing the pages with violence or flogging ideas to death. Lobo as a woman in London during the World War II blitz just meanders without purpose. The original series was delayed by Bisley not meeting deadlines, meaning the final chapter is drawn by Christian Alamy in Bisley’s style, but without his inspiration.

This has been reprinted in several other collections over the years. It’s combined with The Last Czarnian in The Lobo Slipcase Collection (1992) and Portrait of a Bastich (1998 and 2008), neither which include the one-shot Christmas story by the same creative team. It is present and correct, though in Lobo by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant Volume 1 (2018) and Big Fraggin’ Compendium (2024).