If I say the name 'Lobo' to you, a comic reader, then naturally – and if you have a lick of sense at all – you will think about the 1990 series drawn by Simon Bisley. More pointedly, you’ll likely remember the close-up cover of the brutal Czarnian for the first issue, which has become a staple in the proverbial comics art hall of fame. But just over 30 years after its release and after Bisley’s renown redesign of the character, what exactly is it that makes it hold up?

Popverse sat down with the legendary artist at his table at Fan Expo San Francisco to discuss the longevity of Lobo and the rebellious space in which none of his other variations can seem to occupy.

Popverse: Let’s just get right into it: Lobo existed as a character before you got ahold of him, obviously, but I’d like you to talk through the redesign. As soon as you were put on the character is when he really became what we know him as now. How did you have to go about making Lobo yours?

Well Alan Grant called me up out of the blue and told me “there's a character called Lobo and he's a biker-type dude. Would you want to redesign him and draw him?" And it was just no question so I said “Well..yeah” [laughs] I had no idea who Lobo was. I was sent a few references and really literally just took it from there. That was it. I took it from there without any outside influence other than the small reference I was given. I made him quite extreme in the beginning, didn’t I?

To be fair, you've said before that Lobo was you.

Well, he was. Well… yeah. I was riding around on a Harley chopper, had the long hair, the whole shit. I was all jacked, young, womanizing, taking drugs, racing around like a fucking idiot, so it was just an extension of myself, I suppose. I put a lot of myself at the time into that character for sure. So yeah, the character's quite real for me, in that way. That’s basically it. He wasn't too extreme at that point yet, just way more muscular – bigger. The jacket was cut off shorter, and the knee pads, and boots, everything. He was actually being fleshed out quite rapidly and got a bit more extreme. The chain and the hook wasn't my idea. I don't know where that came from. No idea. Just, that happened. I got rid of the dolphins though. Fucking hated the dolphins.

You hated the dolphins?!

No, I didn’t like the dolphins! What a stupid fucking idea. Stupid fucking dolphins. Replace them with penguins later on! Anyways, so, yeah, I enjoyed it. It was good fun. Everyone accepted it. DC didn't make any comment. It was just good.

So, how was it received by fans when it first came out? I mean, you've essentially made one of the most iconic comic book covers of the period and the character has maintained himself through that iconography and design.

Well, it's interesting you say that, because, well, it went down very well. I think it was my first introduction to the American market. It went down very well, because I think it was, looking at it now, it's not that crazy, really. There was a lot of humor in it, I guess. My humor was being translated into it. Yeah, but as far as the cover goes, I'm not sure it was iconic. I don't know.

I think that’s ridiculous. Of course it’s iconic.

You think so?

I mean… extremely yes.

Well, it's not for me. I'm not going to blow my own trumpet. I'm not seeing it. It's just a close up of the character's face! But I guess it's iconic because it's issue number one…or maybe because it’s a close-up? I don't think you get many close ups, do you, of the face?

No, but also that's Lobo as most people think of it. That’s the face that comes to mind. They think of that cover. If you say 'Lobo', talking about the comics, people think of your cover.

I suppose you’re right [laughs] I guess I agree with you on that. I've done the work. I've done it, so it's out there for whoever wants to see it how they want to see it, and so, you're observing it, and you're seeing how it is out there in the world, and I just have to take it at face value.

That seems fair. It’s done and over with and you’ve moved on.

Exactly. I don’t rip through things to see what people think of them. That belongs to the world after I’m done with it. It's time to move onto something else. The last time I really considered that cover was when I found out the original went for $200,000.

Holy shit.

Right? $200,000 fucking dollars. They said that the guy who bought it sold it for $200,000, "Holy smokes," I said, “why couldn’t he throw me a few bucks?” [laughs] He was saying, [whining, high pitched voice] "Hey, man, I bought it for a lot of money back in the day."

Did he sound exactly like that?

[laughs] No but he looks like he would fucking sound like that.

Anyway, I just still can't get my head around it. I don't want to say nothing, but he got paid $200,000, right? You can say, "Yes, here's a couple of grand," you know? “Hey, Simon, I'll take you out for a meal”. Do something, eh? People are just greedy bastards. But listen, I'm not complaining.

Maybe a little.

Well, I am, yeah. [laughs] But yeah, the cover worked, everything worked. I think just being the first issue of Lobo, I suppose it became successful. I don't know if Lobo is as successful as he probably will be or could be, just looking around. It depends how DC handles it. They could fuck it up.

Well he’s been redesigned a few times. Always seems to come back to you though.

Yeah, well, he's gone back to the same design again. You push, and pull it, and stretch it around, but it keeps coming back to what I did originally, fundamentally. I mean, the spirit of the character comes back to the original spirit of the character that I turned it into, really.

I had pretty much a free reign on the script, to the point where I've added a lot to the book, a lot of frames, and panels, and pages that weren't there, just changed it to steer the ship in a different direction. It was a bit like a jam session, really, between me, Keith [Giffen], and Alan [Grant]. It's more like a bunch of guys –like musicians – sitting in a room and just ... I don’t know. Jamming. Keith had an idea what he wanted to do, and he put it down, but we just jammed along, and just other things came about. So, it was quite a freeform experience.

We all had an input in it. I think no one really knew what we were doing. I don't think DC realized what we were doing, nor did we. [laughs] The humor is quite violent and everything, as it went further along. I think what DC ended up with was a huge comic publishing company, they were doing an underground comic book, really, in a way.

Huh. That’s an interesting point. It kind of was, wasn’t it?

Yeah, like a slightly amateur-ish, underground feel to it, really. For sure. I think it caught up with them. I mean…it didn't catch up with them, but they said, "What the fuck is this? What are we doing?" And I think when the Christmas Special came out, DC just went, 'What the fuck? What the fuck are we publishing here?' because no one was looking at the pages. I think – especially when Dan Raspler was the editor, bless him, good guy – he didn't care. He was happy with it. He was enjoying himself, as well. I think he was just as irresponsible as we were. [laughs]

I was about to say, Dan has a good sense of humor.

No, he had a sense of humor. He loved it and he thought it was great, but it came to a point where eventually we had to tone down the blood, and they started editing the stuff. So, they took half the fun away from it, which is a shame. Like, 'Whoa, whoa, what have we got here? We've got to take control of this.' I think they took control of Lobo to the point where they changed him entirely.

I took it personally, and I still do. It's like they're trying to take it away from me. I think, spiritually I have a great responsibility for the character, and I think they know that. They know how closely I connected with Lobo, and only because of their silence, only because they're not really giving me the credit, you know? It’s something that’s largely under addressed.

When they changed, it was like I took that personally that they were attacking me, attacking my character, attacking me as a person; which they weren't, of course but…I don't know. I think they wanted to take the character back and own it, but unfortunately, the character's too strong, and he came back through just as I had originally made him again, so you couldn't kill him, really. It's funny, you try and kill him in the comic, but you couldn't kill his soul, his spirit. It came back.

Well that’s kind of what I was already going to ask is what does the longevity of Lobo as a character just mean to you on a personal level. You kind of already answered that though really.

Yeah, yeah. With the longevity of it, the character, I think it's like Lobo's design is a lot like Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's monster. It's just iconic, and remains, and is the best version ever. It always goes back to that original best version of him. We just hit Lobo just right, because he was unique in that he wasn't based on anything else except the space bike. He was just perfect. He's spot on. You can't get better than he is already. There's nothing you can do. You can give him more and more equipment but you can’t make him any more or less than what he actually is. And then of course they got ahold of him and tried to get inside my head to keep the character going and they just thought Looney Tunes. Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote shit. They made him more of a Looney Tunes character, yeah?

It’s true, I guess. He did become a pretty broad comedy character for a while. Is that bothersome for you?

That's not bothersome for me, no, but I think they ridiculed him. They ended up ridiculing him a little bit. They're making a joke of him. I think they've dumbed him down a great deal. I don't think he was just a dumb biker. They're making him off as some dumb biker who's just got stereotypical loyalty and all this shit. I would have thought he's way more sophisticated, actually. There's way more to him as a character than just a biker going around killing everything just for the fun of it.

Not that you’re biased or anything [laughs]

Yeah of course not [laughs] But yeah…I dunno, I guess I would offer that he's got way more depth to him. I think there’s more potential for the character than anyone is really willing to give him. There is something behind why he is as he is.

Well he’s a fun character in that he’s weirdly rounded. He's pretty morally gray. It's not as good and bad, and black and white as a lot of characters in much of the Big Two canon. A lot of those characters aren’t as well-received anymore

Lobo lasted so long because he is totally his own unique individual. He's from space, he does what he fucking wants. He has his own rules, own laws, and he's just nothing like the other characters at all. There's no rivalries for him to even exist within. He's just the good and the bad. He's just a rebel. People like rebels, you know?

He's rock and roll. He's just a crazy fuck. People like that. There's no rules there. Then again, like you speak in terms of how I saw myself, or I just see that spirit. It's weird. He's going against the grain. There were so many comics at the time that were so violent, but we put the fun in violence –and while violence isn't fun, I've always parodied it a bit. I guess it was a bit slapstick-y, wasn't it, yeah? [laughs]

Slapstick for adults!

[laughs] Exactly that, yeah! It was just funny. What I see as funny… I don't know. I think maybe a lot of myself did come through, because no one told me I shouldn't be doing this shit or doing that. I threw a lot of things in there that weren't meant to be. The penguins weren't meant to be there, the dog, and all that shit just ended up being there. I think what happened, my rebelliousness translated off the page to the reader. So many people would come to me saying, 'Hey, when I was a kid, I read this. I had to hide it from my mom, or my mom took it. She hid it away from me. She took this away from me, but I had two copies.' It was like some people's enlightening, in a way. Maybe that rebellious and crazy shit affected them. There's a lot less conformist nature and dictating to you about 'Oh, this is the hero, this' and 'this hero that' and all these bullshit morals and stuff. It was just fun. And it was funny. And it was interesting, you know?

It's almost like the longevity of Lobo gave an entire generation of people an outlet to be more rebellious.

That's a really good way of putting it. That's what I like about you – I can ramble for about half an hour and you can pick up what I’m saying in a sentence. [laughs] That’s exactly it. I suppose it's like when punk rock came out – it was so different to absolutely everything else we were dealing with at the time, you know? It was something interesting and fuck you and rebellious and funny. That’s what lasts. That’s what’s always going to hold up more than anything else.