SERIES: Lobo: Angel of Death #0
TITLE: "Prologue"
AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Yes (with permission)
FEEDBACK: Always helpful...
NOTES: I'm not fond of what DC Comics has done to Lobo in the last several years, so I'm going back to something closer to the original concept -- say, his first appearance with the Justice League. This series was written for the "DC: Year Two" fanfic site (http://slayerfanfic.com/dcy2/), which seems to have vanished.
SUMMARY: An introduction to Lobo, as written several centuries after the fact.
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics owns the concepts behind Lobo and ALL related characters and retains complete rights to said characters. The original concepts and original characters introduced here are the intellectual property of the author.
***********************
Excerpted from Myth, Magic, and Power: Archetypes of the 21st Century, by Niaoro Ahphezar Callex, 2807 C.E.:
Even in the vast ocean of stars -- across a million worlds and the widely varied cultures they had nurtured for millennia, from the blazing heart of the galaxy to the dim misty marches of each spiral arm -- some men were legends.
In the early decades of the twenty-first century, several beings could lay claim to that title. Even today their names resonate with the power of layered myths: Darkseid, Hal Jordan, Wonder Woman, Superman... all possessed amazing powers, but to most of the galaxy's several trillion inhabitants they were distant figures -- characters whose exploits came to them through newspapers and vidwindows. Names, and little more.
There was, however, one legend that moved freely among the races of the galaxy, the mere sound of whose name was enough to make them shiver and whisper like penned sheep when the wind brings news of the wolf. Nobody could predict when or where he would appear -- a tall proud figure, lean and lethal, who walked where he willed and dealt death as he pleased because no other being alive had the power to stop him.
Lobo first came to the galaxy's attention in the middle of the twentieth century. His name, which had been granted to him by the Khunds, translated roughly as He Who Devours Your Heart And Thoroughly Enjoys It -- a title he had earned in battle, and since he had no other name it served as one quite well. He was a skilled assassin, but if that were all there had been to him he would never have been known beyond the circles of rich men and underworld leaders who hired him to do their dirty work, and certainly he would not be remembered so many centuries after his destruction.
Lobo, however, was unique. The universe had never seen anything like him, nor ever would again -- he was the last of a race previously unknown to galactic historians, the details of his origin were an utter mystery, and his contradictory aspects were as puzzling to the commentators of his own era as they are to historians today.
He was in all ways an exceptional character. His build -- average height, slender, and smoothly muscled -- was dangerously deceptive: he could strike a man's head off, rip through a wall of exobonded titanium, or tear out the spine of a Cluster heavy starcruiser with equal ease. There was no barrier in the universe that could stand in his way, or at least none that his targets had been able to find before they were terminated.
He seemed invulnerable, impervious to the cold of space and the heat of blazing suns, able to breathe anything from hard vacuum to acid, and resistant to poisons, lasers, and military biological agents. Whatever was thrown at him, be it bullets or thermonuclear missiles, Lobo would rise from the wreckage when the dust had cleared and proceed to fulfill his mission -- and now that he was really annoyed, he would be sure to kill his target in as creative and painful a way as possible.
There was also his blood-power to consider. Whatever other methods the Czarnians had used for reproduction -- and the girls of various brothels across the galaxy could certainly attest that Lobo had a healthy sex drive, if not fertility -- their primary means was probably parthenogenesis. If someone managed to actually injure Lobo enough to shed his blood, every drop of it developed almost instantly into a full-scale clone of its source. And if one Lobo was bad, fifty or a hundred of him were infinitely worse... especially since the clones, apparently mindless except for the urge to destroy, were every bit as strong and deadly as Lobo himself and shared his clonal powers. They swarmed over everything in their path before self-destructing in an explosion of searing energy an hour or so after their birth. (The loss of this cloning ability in the first years of the century made Lobo no less dangerous: it merely curtailed his ability to spread that swath of destruction with geometrically increasing speed. As previously stated, one Lobo was quite enough to deal with.)
These purely physical advantages were matched by keen intelligence and a mind which, if the few telepaths who had ventured to touch it are to be believed, was as clear and as cold as black ice. Records indicate that Lobo knew at least thirty languages beyond the Interlac dialect common at that time, including Khundian, Riosan, Felinark, Terran, and the intricate gesture-based system of the Sirilan Codex. He had a practical working knowledge of chemistry, anatomy (carbon-based and silicon), starship mechanics, and piloting, and while he preferred not to employ weapons he demonstrated easy proficiency in their use, from archery and blades to plasma rifles and lasers. Add to those talents a will so powerful that even the much-vaunted power of the Green Lantern's ring could not overcome it, and you have a creature as demonic (or perhaps as divine) as anything outside the realm of the gods.
(In fact, one religious movement originating on Niav'han VII in the last two decades of the twentieth century proposed that Lobo was an archetype of Death itself -- a living aspect of what some saw as darkness, but was in reality a force integral to the balance of the universe. The Niav'hanians embraced Lobo as part of their pantheon, which included Darkseid, The Guardians, and The Controllers, among others. Ironically, it was Darkseid himself who eventually destroyed their world.)
Like Death, Lobo was impartial: he slew commoners and kings, women and men, infants and children. He worked for anyone with the money to pay his extremely high fees -- but pay they did, and gladly, because Lobo did not fail.
Ever.
The key to his success lay in his empathic powers, which enabled him to take the "scent" of a target's aura from an object they had touched, or even a place they had visited. Once he set his sights on you there was nowhere to run or to hide. He would track you across the wide wastes of space for days or months or even years, pursuing you relentlessly until you were so exhausted, so tired of running that you could go no futher -- even, perhaps, so weary that the oblivion he gave you seemed like a gift.
No one knew for certain how many he had killed; it would have taken a coordinated effort on the part of several hundred planetary and intergalactic governments to tally up the dead. Many planets had their own particular tale of Lobo's exploits -- how he had murdered their good and just ruler; how he had slain the bloody tyrant and set the people free; or even simply of how heÕd made planetfall, spent an uneventful day or two on-world (perhaps attending a festival or an opera), then left as enigmatically as he'd come. He offered little conversation, and no one considered questioning him. After all, although it was said that he never killed without a contract, one could never be too careful...
Lobo was the last of his species, and he loved to kill: anything beyond that was random conjecture. Some believed that he was in league with the Devil himself, and it was from that unholy pact that he gained his powers; others speculated that he was a rogue creation of the Psions or an agent of Darkseid; and the Niav'hanians, as previously mentioned, named him a god. Whatever they called him, it was all one to Lobo; he did not seem to care what anyone thought of him, except insofar as they feared him. It was enough for him that sentient beings from one end of the galaxy to the other spoke his name, if they spoke it at all, in the lowest of whispers, as if they feared that he would hear them across the wide wastes of space and come for them, an infernal creature as white as terror and black as hate, with eyes blazing as red as the fires of Hell -- come for them, and deliver them from this life.
An angel of death, indeed... but one with an inexplicable streak of mercy.
It is fair to say that one the most intriguing aspects of Lobo's life, to both his contemporaries and to modern historians, was a simple yet essential contradiction in his nature. Lobo was a predator who killed with genuine enjoyment and utter ruthlessness, in part because he held every other sentient being in the universe in utter contempt. He considered them merely annoyances or tools or targets, and they had nothing within them that could penetrate the cold keep of his heart.
There was one creature, however, that never failed to provoke a flow of pure and powerful love from the assassin: dolphinus dolphinus stellaris -- the common space dolphin, an animal widely considered vermin and, at that time, almost hunted to extinction. Whole pods of these graceful creatures frequented the isolated asteroid belt where Lobo had established his base of operations, taking advantage of his protection; it was common knowledge that the assassin considered them his own, and would take swift revenge on anyone reckless or foolish enough to harm them.
With absolute disregard for logic or his reputation, Lobo cared for the dolphins with patient tenderness: feeding them, playing with them, and, when they came to him in distress, tending their wounds or helping the females give birth. He treated them as his children, and they reciprocated his love with equally pure devotion and trust. Their beauty pleased him, and he was soothed by their songs and caresses; in fact, their presence was the closest thing he knew to the warmth of friendship, until --
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This tale deserves a grander introduction. Any story of death and rebirth, of war and love, of demons and angels, princesses and dragons, of courage and transformation and the breaking of old curses, should begin as all fairytales do, with that time-honored phrase:
"Once upon a time..."
TO BE CONTINUED...
TITLE: "Prologue"
AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Yes (with permission)
FEEDBACK: Always helpful...
NOTES: I'm not fond of what DC Comics has done to Lobo in the last several years, so I'm going back to something closer to the original concept -- say, his first appearance with the Justice League. This series was written for the "DC: Year Two" fanfic site (http://slayerfanfic.com/dcy2/), which seems to have vanished.
SUMMARY: An introduction to Lobo, as written several centuries after the fact.
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics owns the concepts behind Lobo and ALL related characters and retains complete rights to said characters. The original concepts and original characters introduced here are the intellectual property of the author.
***********************
Excerpted from Myth, Magic, and Power: Archetypes of the 21st Century, by Niaoro Ahphezar Callex, 2807 C.E.:
Even in the vast ocean of stars -- across a million worlds and the widely varied cultures they had nurtured for millennia, from the blazing heart of the galaxy to the dim misty marches of each spiral arm -- some men were legends.
In the early decades of the twenty-first century, several beings could lay claim to that title. Even today their names resonate with the power of layered myths: Darkseid, Hal Jordan, Wonder Woman, Superman... all possessed amazing powers, but to most of the galaxy's several trillion inhabitants they were distant figures -- characters whose exploits came to them through newspapers and vidwindows. Names, and little more.
There was, however, one legend that moved freely among the races of the galaxy, the mere sound of whose name was enough to make them shiver and whisper like penned sheep when the wind brings news of the wolf. Nobody could predict when or where he would appear -- a tall proud figure, lean and lethal, who walked where he willed and dealt death as he pleased because no other being alive had the power to stop him.
Lobo first came to the galaxy's attention in the middle of the twentieth century. His name, which had been granted to him by the Khunds, translated roughly as He Who Devours Your Heart And Thoroughly Enjoys It -- a title he had earned in battle, and since he had no other name it served as one quite well. He was a skilled assassin, but if that were all there had been to him he would never have been known beyond the circles of rich men and underworld leaders who hired him to do their dirty work, and certainly he would not be remembered so many centuries after his destruction.
Lobo, however, was unique. The universe had never seen anything like him, nor ever would again -- he was the last of a race previously unknown to galactic historians, the details of his origin were an utter mystery, and his contradictory aspects were as puzzling to the commentators of his own era as they are to historians today.
He was in all ways an exceptional character. His build -- average height, slender, and smoothly muscled -- was dangerously deceptive: he could strike a man's head off, rip through a wall of exobonded titanium, or tear out the spine of a Cluster heavy starcruiser with equal ease. There was no barrier in the universe that could stand in his way, or at least none that his targets had been able to find before they were terminated.
He seemed invulnerable, impervious to the cold of space and the heat of blazing suns, able to breathe anything from hard vacuum to acid, and resistant to poisons, lasers, and military biological agents. Whatever was thrown at him, be it bullets or thermonuclear missiles, Lobo would rise from the wreckage when the dust had cleared and proceed to fulfill his mission -- and now that he was really annoyed, he would be sure to kill his target in as creative and painful a way as possible.
There was also his blood-power to consider. Whatever other methods the Czarnians had used for reproduction -- and the girls of various brothels across the galaxy could certainly attest that Lobo had a healthy sex drive, if not fertility -- their primary means was probably parthenogenesis. If someone managed to actually injure Lobo enough to shed his blood, every drop of it developed almost instantly into a full-scale clone of its source. And if one Lobo was bad, fifty or a hundred of him were infinitely worse... especially since the clones, apparently mindless except for the urge to destroy, were every bit as strong and deadly as Lobo himself and shared his clonal powers. They swarmed over everything in their path before self-destructing in an explosion of searing energy an hour or so after their birth. (The loss of this cloning ability in the first years of the century made Lobo no less dangerous: it merely curtailed his ability to spread that swath of destruction with geometrically increasing speed. As previously stated, one Lobo was quite enough to deal with.)
These purely physical advantages were matched by keen intelligence and a mind which, if the few telepaths who had ventured to touch it are to be believed, was as clear and as cold as black ice. Records indicate that Lobo knew at least thirty languages beyond the Interlac dialect common at that time, including Khundian, Riosan, Felinark, Terran, and the intricate gesture-based system of the Sirilan Codex. He had a practical working knowledge of chemistry, anatomy (carbon-based and silicon), starship mechanics, and piloting, and while he preferred not to employ weapons he demonstrated easy proficiency in their use, from archery and blades to plasma rifles and lasers. Add to those talents a will so powerful that even the much-vaunted power of the Green Lantern's ring could not overcome it, and you have a creature as demonic (or perhaps as divine) as anything outside the realm of the gods.
(In fact, one religious movement originating on Niav'han VII in the last two decades of the twentieth century proposed that Lobo was an archetype of Death itself -- a living aspect of what some saw as darkness, but was in reality a force integral to the balance of the universe. The Niav'hanians embraced Lobo as part of their pantheon, which included Darkseid, The Guardians, and The Controllers, among others. Ironically, it was Darkseid himself who eventually destroyed their world.)
Like Death, Lobo was impartial: he slew commoners and kings, women and men, infants and children. He worked for anyone with the money to pay his extremely high fees -- but pay they did, and gladly, because Lobo did not fail.
Ever.
The key to his success lay in his empathic powers, which enabled him to take the "scent" of a target's aura from an object they had touched, or even a place they had visited. Once he set his sights on you there was nowhere to run or to hide. He would track you across the wide wastes of space for days or months or even years, pursuing you relentlessly until you were so exhausted, so tired of running that you could go no futher -- even, perhaps, so weary that the oblivion he gave you seemed like a gift.
No one knew for certain how many he had killed; it would have taken a coordinated effort on the part of several hundred planetary and intergalactic governments to tally up the dead. Many planets had their own particular tale of Lobo's exploits -- how he had murdered their good and just ruler; how he had slain the bloody tyrant and set the people free; or even simply of how heÕd made planetfall, spent an uneventful day or two on-world (perhaps attending a festival or an opera), then left as enigmatically as he'd come. He offered little conversation, and no one considered questioning him. After all, although it was said that he never killed without a contract, one could never be too careful...
Lobo was the last of his species, and he loved to kill: anything beyond that was random conjecture. Some believed that he was in league with the Devil himself, and it was from that unholy pact that he gained his powers; others speculated that he was a rogue creation of the Psions or an agent of Darkseid; and the Niav'hanians, as previously mentioned, named him a god. Whatever they called him, it was all one to Lobo; he did not seem to care what anyone thought of him, except insofar as they feared him. It was enough for him that sentient beings from one end of the galaxy to the other spoke his name, if they spoke it at all, in the lowest of whispers, as if they feared that he would hear them across the wide wastes of space and come for them, an infernal creature as white as terror and black as hate, with eyes blazing as red as the fires of Hell -- come for them, and deliver them from this life.
An angel of death, indeed... but one with an inexplicable streak of mercy.
It is fair to say that one the most intriguing aspects of Lobo's life, to both his contemporaries and to modern historians, was a simple yet essential contradiction in his nature. Lobo was a predator who killed with genuine enjoyment and utter ruthlessness, in part because he held every other sentient being in the universe in utter contempt. He considered them merely annoyances or tools or targets, and they had nothing within them that could penetrate the cold keep of his heart.
There was one creature, however, that never failed to provoke a flow of pure and powerful love from the assassin: dolphinus dolphinus stellaris -- the common space dolphin, an animal widely considered vermin and, at that time, almost hunted to extinction. Whole pods of these graceful creatures frequented the isolated asteroid belt where Lobo had established his base of operations, taking advantage of his protection; it was common knowledge that the assassin considered them his own, and would take swift revenge on anyone reckless or foolish enough to harm them.
With absolute disregard for logic or his reputation, Lobo cared for the dolphins with patient tenderness: feeding them, playing with them, and, when they came to him in distress, tending their wounds or helping the females give birth. He treated them as his children, and they reciprocated his love with equally pure devotion and trust. Their beauty pleased him, and he was soothed by their songs and caresses; in fact, their presence was the closest thing he knew to the warmth of friendship, until --
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This tale deserves a grander introduction. Any story of death and rebirth, of war and love, of demons and angels, princesses and dragons, of courage and transformation and the breaking of old curses, should begin as all fairytales do, with that time-honored phrase:
"Once upon a time..."
TO BE CONTINUED...