DC K.O. - Wonder Woman vs. Lobo // Review
There are sixteen contestants remaining in one of the goofiest mega-crossovers that has ever hit a mainstream superhero universe. DC’s incredibly silly event continues with DC K.O. - Wonder Woman vs. Lobo. The Amazon demigoddess squares-off against a comically toxic male in an issue that is brought to page and panel by writer Joëlle Jones and the art team of Jason Howard, Cary Nord and Daniel Bayliss. Color comes to the page courtest of Tamra Bonvillain and Daniel Bayliss. A rather predictable ending comes about in a slightly less than predictable way in an issue that manages to be quite entertaining in spite of itself.
The contest is schedule for three rounds. The first round is a straight-ahead match in a ring with an audience. The second round is in an ancient temple where both contestants are allowed to chose their own form and their own armaments. If the contest advances to the third round, (and of course it will) there’s quite a lot that’s going to have to go on to determine the winner including a chessboxing showdown, a shin kicking contest and the trial of carjitsu.) It’s a big, goofy fight to the death with the cards stacked in Lobo’s favor because he’s got a deal with The Entity that effectively makes him immortal...
The problem with so many of the entries in the crossover even so far...is that they’re taking an incredibly stupid idea seriously. DC K.O. is remarkably childish. Jones’ approach to that childishness is to simply have fun with it. As a result, Wonder Woman vs. Lobo ends-up getting it right. It doesn’t hurt that Lobo is himself a kind of a rubbery Loony Tunes-style character who fits the silly slapstick format of an absurdist three-round fight. It’s good, goofy fun.
The art team manages to modulate through the issue with the kind of clever articulation that actually finds the occasionally serious moment to contrast against all of the silliness. Most of the more serious end of things gets placed on the page in the presence of Wonder Woman, but Lobo gets to look like a badass occasionally as well. For the most part, though, the over-the-top silliness of the action maintains its hold over the visual end of the issue. The art team manages to find all the right angles for maximum impact in an appealingly cartoonish presentation.
The match-up between a major feminist icon and a toxic male anti-hero feels more or less perfect, but Lobo’s style doesn’t work well with the tradition of Wonder Woman. Better to give Lobo someone to challenge who has a similar comic genre, but is actually a totally different kind of personality. A battle between Lobo and Ambush Bug or Captain Carrot would have been a much more clever pairing with a character like Lobo. The specific tones of each character would have clashed a little bit less if they were both cartoony characters from the DC Universe.
