Hitman Book 7: Closing Time (Hitman #51-60, Hitman/Lobo: That Stupid Bastich #1, JLA/Hitman #1-2 and a story from Superman 80-Page Giant #1) PART ONE

"Well I.. I guess this is it." - Sixpack

Tommy Monaghan dies at the end of Hitman.  To be blunt it's no real spoiler or surprise once you've read this far.  He dies doing a heroic thing. He dies to save his best friend from a fate worse than death.  He dies because in many ways Ennis is a supremely moral writer who has often his amoral and immoral characters pay the ultimate price of their life decisions.  He dies in the eight page final arc, "Closing Time" and the JLA/Hitman story actually was written in 2006, five years after the main series came to a close.  However as the JLA story takes place chronologically (apart from it's coda) before the final arc, I've decided to cover it in this post along with all the other issues that aren't "Closing Time" leaving the final post in this look at the Hitman series to concentrate fully on Tommy's final tale.  The other two issues from the main series, tie up the loose ends of Sixpack and the lovably useless Section 8, while the Lobo story feels like a cathartic one for Ennis as he puts the immortal Czarnian through a hilarious humliation conga.  The JLA story appears to tell a tale Ennis was denied by the cancellation of the series, that Tommy was destined to do some special and important, and is set roughly during the Grant Morrison JLA era so has all the big guns still in it, including Superman.

HITMAN/LOBO: THAT STUPID BASTICH - I've looked at Lobo before in the two miniseries collection that established his character fully as a psychopathic alien killer.  I said then that it was a some what prescient parody of what would become the "Image" comics type of murderous anti-hero, but by the 2000, what had been a humourously over the top character lampooing the excesses of the genre had become emblematic of those excesses instead and I think Ennis found that distasteful as he generally likes to explore the effects violence has on his characters lives rather than just being violent for the sake of violence, so in this issue he's using Lobo to represent all that he finds irritating about the popularity of badass killers who never get to feel the repercussions of their bad behaviour.

In this story drawn by Doug Mahnke, the main man comes into Noonan's and starts behaving with his customarily boorish behaviour.  Tommy reads his mind which "wasn't a major undertaking" and to find out his strengths and weaknesses, then Lobo starts bullying Sixpack, so Tommy pours booze all over himself and addresses Lobo as "miss".  This makes Lobo slightly annoyed:

Lobo: "No one question's th' gender o' th'main man an' lives ta tell th' tale!  Whoever yah are, ya hume bastich - consider yerself fragged!"

Tommy blows Lobo's eyes out and leads him out of Noonan's using his alchohol smell to guide Lobo.  As Lobo chases him they cross paths with some gangsters who want to kill Tommy for the bounty still on his head.  A sniper fires at him but hits Lobo instead, making him madder still.  Tommy thinks he might have bitten off more than he can chew getting Lobo angry with him, so while he thinks of a way out of this he leads Lobo to the rest of the gangsters and while Lobo kills them all, he has an idea and phones Sixpack to get Section 8 on the case.

Lobo meets his match.

Tommy then leads Lobo into a building yard where Section 8 take it in turns to assault Lobo, finally Tommy temporarily knocks Lobo out with a wrecking ball and armed with a camera and Bueno Excellente in a wedding dress they set about filming blackmail material with Bueno "marrying" Lobo and er... consumating it as well.  Then for the final touch Dogwelder welds a dog to Lobo's bum.

Later Lobo comes around and rages back to Noonan's, but before he can kill Tommy, Tommy shows him the film and says if he hurts him or anyone involved he'll release copies to everyone in the galaxy.  Lobo reluctantly leaves and Tommy, Sean (this dates to just before Sean died in the main series) and Sixpack celebrate.  This is something of a last hurrah for Section 8, as they don't come out of their next entanglement with more powerful forces very well at all. And even though I quite like Lobo myself, it's still a pretty funny issue overall.

SUPERMAN 80 PAGE GIANT #1 - Before that we get an "imaginary story" published around the time of Superman's appearence in the main Hitman series, the Eisner award winning "Of Thee I Sing" covered in my look at book five. This short story imagines what would happen if Sixpack really had superpowers and what might happen when he and Superman go on patrol together.  Needless to say, hilarity ensues as Superman says they can't fight crime by attacking criminals before they do anything.

Superman: "Haven't you heard of due process? Of constitutional rights? The law?"

Sixpack: "Ain't that for the police?"

Superman: "Well yes, but we still have to observe the same protocols, we do work outside the law techinically speaking but that doesn't just give you the right to just.. just assault whoever you want."

Sixpack and Superman. A titanic team-up!

This falls on deaf ears as Sixpack starts trying to set a prison on fire in the name of preventative justice.  Superman then introduces him to a reformed Doomsday (infamously the creature that killed him in the 90's) and together they stop an old lady being mugged.  Superman then bids Sixpack farewell with the following words:

Superman: "It's been a long, strange night Sixpack.  Okay, one last time. You do not act without proof. You use no more force than neccesary. You give the fellow a chance to repent and do the right thing.  Then.. and only then..."

Sixpack: "... you're clear to go ahead and smash his face to a bloody pulp?"

Superman: "No Sixpack.  You'll be a hero".

Then Sixpack wakes up from his drunken dream on the floor of Noonan's and tries and fails to fly away. Which ends this fun little story of the worlds grubbiest "hero" meeting the Big Blue Boy Scout.

SUPER GUY - The next Hitman story taking place in the main series begins with Tommy and Natt chasing down a naked man.  The nude man reaches around and pulls a machine gun out of his arse and fires back at them. At Injun Peak research centre, Doctor Jacksons is discussing with Doctor Haddock why his lab assisstant took off all his clothes and jumped out of the window.  Haddock says he opened something called "The Tesseract" inside his assisstant, a way of creating infinite space inside one object.  Unfortunately this drove his assisstant insane.

EW.

Back with Tommy and Natt, the nude man is using guns and explosives pulled out of his bum to fend them off.  We then join Sixpack and Section 8 meeting down in the sewers.  Friendly Fire is depressed and tries to tell Sixpack like it is:

Friendly Fire: "We're not superheroes Sixpack!  We're a bunch of deranged bastards! The whole situation is completely and totally insane!"

Sixpack accuses him of defeatism, but Friendly Fire runs down a list of just how useless they are, including accusing Sixpack of alchoholism. He then sees how gutted Sixpack is and apologises but says he was just trying to get them to face reality.

Back with the scientists, Doctor Jackson studies Doctor Haddock's notes and finds something startling.  It seems Haddock signed a pact with some entities known as "The Many Angled Ones" and performed a Satanic ritual on his assisstant to activate the Tesseract. Jackson suddenly realises the nude man should not be killed, but is too late as Tommy manages to blow the assisstant away and suddenly weird toothy shapes appear in the sky.  Down in the sewer, Sixpack thinks this is a job for Section 8.

The Many Angled Ones.

The creatures say they are The Many Angled Ones who were bound to an earthly vessel.  When that vessel was killed they were freed. It is then that Section 8 attack.  They do poorly however and are all killed apart from Sixpack and Bueno Excellente. The scientists arrive to warn Tommy, but realise they are too late.  The Many Angled Ones reward Haddock for bringing them to earth by kiling him which they say is just a taste of what's going to happen to the planet now. Totally out of their depth Tommy and Natt try and blow the Many Angled Ones up.. somehow.  But in the resulting explosion and fire only Sixpack is left standing with a forcefield around him.

Sixpack says it's because he is a superhero. The Many Angled Ones laugh at him for being prepared to sacrifice himself even when the odds against him are so overwhelming. Sixpack says that's what superheroes do. The Many Angled Ones then offer him a deal:

Many Angled One: "Come back with us.  Enter our realm. Try your strength in a battle for your own soul. Win you salvation or damnation. Do this now and we shall spare this world."

Sixpack: "Done"

Farewell Sixpack

And he leaves with them.  Gradually his mates realise he won't be coming back and erect a statue in his memory so people won't forget the sacrifice he made.  But Ennis also shows us a man called Sidney Speck at an AA meeting in New York who might just be a reformed Sixpack, but it's left up to us to decide what his fate might have been.  Ennis is a very humane writer in many ways, giving Sixpack a heroic exit for what was really a one-note joke character for the series and a possible happy ending for him too.  I take the happy ending everytime.

ON THE DARKSIDE - The framing device of this story is Clark Kent telling a story to a journalist who has been trying for two years to get to the bottom of the link between Superman and a "Gotham thug".  Clark tells the journalist he is going to tell him a story he can't print because Superman needs to confess via him.  We then flashback to the era when Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Flash were all Justice League America members. There is a shuttle approaching their base on the moon that wants to touchdown there as it is in trouble.

The Justice League of America

Green Lantern flies out and scans it, then Batman tells him to get away from it, it's dangerous.  Batman then fills everyone in on the Bloodlines incident, the one where interstellar parasites ended up giving random people powers, including Tommy.  It appears that the Bloodlines virus is on the shuttle.  Batman goes to fetch Tommy so they can analyse a living Bloodlines survivor.  Sean, Natt and Ringo are all alive at this point and they are at Noonan's with Tommy, who steps out to take a call and is grabbed by Batman.

Batman: "Go for your guns.  I'll break your arm. If you even look like throwing up, I'll break both."

Tommy: "How about if I just hang here and wet my pants?"

Batman: "That would be fine."

Batman then teleports him and Tommy back up to the JLA moonbase. He introduces himself to Flash and Wonder Woman, then sees Green Lantern and jovially asks him if he remembers their team-up.  Batman is disgusted at hearing about them working together, especially as Green Lantern knew Tommy was a hitman.

Green Lantern: "Dude, it's Gotham you know? Something terrible always happens to me when I go there... Someone spiked my drink, and I don't know what happened - all I remember is this voice going Bueno over and over..."

Oh Garth, what did poor Kyle Rayner do to deserve a night with Bueno Excellente?  You bad, bad man you. Anyway, Batman starts giving a lecture on morality, which is interrupted by Superman walking in and greeting Tommy warmly. Batman flatly tells Superman that Tommy is a killer and Tommy does at least have the good grace to look ashamed in the face of Superman's disappointment.

Superman learns the truth about Tommy

They start analysing Tommy's blood and find that the Bloodlines virus on the shuttle has evolved to become stronger.  Meanwhile Superman talks with Wonder Woman about the circumstances of his meeting with Tommy and how he still believes in what he told him despite Tommy's profession. In the restroom, Tommy takes an opportunity to write "Tommy was here" in felt tip on the wall.  Suddenly the shuttle comes crashing down and takes out most of the room Tommy is in exposing him to the vacuum of space.  Luckily Green Lantern comes and rescues him using his ring much to Tommy's relief.

Superman goes into the shuttle much to Batman's annoyance, then they lose contact with him.  They also find that their powers have somehow been switched off, including Green Lantern's ring.

Wonder Woman:  "If they do get in, we're going to need weapons".

Green Lantern: "Well that's the problem.  We're the weapons and we're not working".

The crew of the NASA probe come walking across the moons surface to the JLA headquarters. Tommy surruptiously gets his guns back while the others prepare to fight hand to hand.  The NASA crew remove their helmets to reveal parasites stuck to their faces and they have a container with more in for the JLA.  Tommy fires on them and they respond with a display of superpowers.  Batman is pissed at Tommy for attacking them as the hosts are still human.  The JLA then pile in and fight them.

Uh-oh...

Batman is quickly taken out and a parasite attached to his head.  Wonder Woman realises that Batman has explosives in his utility belt and they use them to escape with Batman to a safer part of the base.   They can't kill the parasite because if "one dies, two die" mumbles the possessed Batman.  Safe for now under Aquaman's tank they ponder the situation, ie, what's happened to Superman and the fact that if the US government get wind of what has happened they'll nuke the base.

Wonder Woman takes charge, she and Tommy will return to the control room, the others will guard Batman.  Climbing a ladder to get there, the possessed crew throw more alien parasites down at Wonder Woman and Tommy.  She grabs them all and jumps off the ladder telling Tommy to "keep fighting".   At the top, Tommy is faced by a possessed Superman.  But he manages to get through to him and Superman rips the parasite of his face. Superman though is left weak, cold and shivering so Tommy goes into battle the possessed crew alone.  He kills them, then tells one of the leftover parasites to leave Batman or he'll kill the rest of them.  They do so.

Tommy takes down the infected men.

The JLA and Tommy get their powers back and the Flash makes it to the communications screen to tell the goverment to call off the nukes. Batman decides to be a hardass about Tommy's actions, saying killing is not the JLA way.

Tommy: "I ain't no superhero...I'm just some schmuck from the Cauldron an' I did the only thing I could think to do!"

Batman cuffs him and leaves him with two members of Gotham PD, who let Tommy go in lieu of gambling debts. We then return to Clark in the present, and Clark says Tommy took a decision no superhero could make.

Clark: "That's how Tommy saved the JLA...I'm talking about sheer, unadulterated, moral courage."

He says Superman and Tommy never met again, although Superman always felt an injustice had been done and wondered if he could make it up somehow. The reporter says that when he was in Noonan's, Hacken had always said that Tommy said "Superman's Okay by me."

Later Clark is now Superman and he flies up to the moon.  The base was repaired after the shuttle crashed into it but one piece of rubble was left standing.  The section of wall where Tommy wrote, "Tommy was here" on it.  And it's here Superman always comes to "offer a prayer to the Lord for the soul of a killer."

Aw Garth stop plucking my heartstrings man.

And this was the last of Tommy's appearances in the DCU, giving him a fine send off and fulfilling the prophecy Pat had about Tommy being destined to do something special.  if I have one complaint it's the art.  When John McCrea tries to make his art less styalised if tends to come off as rather bland and lifeless compared to how energetic it usually is.  I had the same complaint about his work on The Boys.  But Ennis's script mostly treats the JLA with respect and the ending is just gorgeously melancholy.  Taking this story along with Sixpack's last stand in "Super Guy", the short story in the Superman Special and the humiliation of Lobo it does feel like Garth Ennis, for all his detractors would claim otherwise, really does get what lies at the heart of the appeal of the superhero concept, even if he isn't always enamoured of it in practice.   The fall of Tommy is the only story left now, so I hope you return in a couple of days and find out how it all ends.

Lobo: Portrait Of Bastich (The Last Czarnian #1-4, Lobo's Back #1-4)

 "I'm Lobo! I killed all the Czarnians! I couldn't have missed her! Not her!" - Lobo

In the 90's, something happened to comics.  They got dark.  This didn't happen overnight, there had been a long build-up since the mid-1970's.  Marvel had given us anti-heroes like Wolverine and The Punisher who were willing to kill, unlike the shiny heroes of the Silver Age.  And Alan Moore was pushing boundaries at DC laying the foundation for the future  Vertigo imprint with his seminal run on Swamp Thing.  The real tipping point for the creation of what TV Tropes terms the Nineties Antihero though was the one-two punch of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.  A lesson was learned from these two series, unfortunately it was the wrong lesson.  Adultness was conflated with extreme violence rather than narrative complexity and soon a horde of irony free murdering psychopath "heroes" were unleashed on the world by the early Image gang and the Marvel and DC comics playing catch-up with them.  This of course was ripe for parody, what's interesting about this Lobo book is that it actually collects two series from 1990 and 1991, before the worst excesses of the Image era happened.  It's both a prescient parody and an embodiment of a change that was taking place, and not always a change for the better.  Luckily it more than stands the test of time in other ways, being wonderfully drawn by Simon Bisley and hilariously written by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant.

Lobo was created in 1983 as a fairly uninteresting villian and was rarely used until the comics collected in this trade paperback redefined him as a ridiculously over the top anti-hero, gaining him a significant cult following that has kept him a regular in the DCU ever since.  Even creator Keith Giffen seemed bemused by this, in an interview from 2006 quoted on Wikipedia he said "I have no idea why Lobo took off... I came up with him as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine hero prototype, and somehow he caught on as the high violence poster boy. Go figure."  It was the 90's Keith, nothing more needs to be said.

Look he maybe a parody, but he is pretty badass as well.

Although Keith Giffen is an American writer, he only supplied the plot outline and breakdowns.  The dialogue and art are something of a 2000AD reunion-fest, with Judge Dredd writer Alan Grant giving us the words and ABC Warriors/Slaine artist Simon Bisley on pictures.  Bisley is one of my favourite artists, although I prefer his work either in black and white or painted, the grungy colour palette here can't disguise the sheer manic energy of his work.  If you are wondering what a "Bastich" is by the way, it's a family friendly version of "bastard" which Lobo used when he was starring in more mainstream DCU comics.  Ironically, in this collection, he uses "bastard" freely as this is/was aimed at (im)mature readers.

He's not all bad.  He lives with a pod of space dolphins and is known to "frolick" with them sometimes.

The first miniseries - The Last Czarnian has a very straightforward plot.  Lobo currently works loosely for interplanetary peacekeeping team called L.E.G.I.O.N, whose boss - Vril Dox- beat Lobo in a fight and now Lobo has to do jobs for him.  The latest job is to go collect a prisoner called E.J Tribb from jail on another planet ( she flunked the kid of an important figure there which got her arrested) and bring her to the L.E.G.I.O.N headquarters, which Lobo goes off to do with much ill grace.  He is even more pissed off when he finds out that not only is the person he has to collect another Czarnian, meaning he Lobo isn't the last (Lobo used a bio-weapon to wipe his people out so he could be unique) but she is also his fourth grade teacher and the author of his unauthorised biography as well (text excerpts of which are included to provide more backstory of Lobo's terrible misdeeds).  But she has to be delivered alive, so after Lobo casually murders the police chief who was in charge of holding her for being pissy with him, off they ride on Lobo's badass spacebike.

Lobo escorts Ms. Tribb

The main joke behind this miniseries is that Lobo and his charge keep pissing people off as they travel.  This includes a gang of Lobo fans and  some tooled up little old ladies who want to kill Tribb for writing the Lobo book, as well as the cops whom Lobo killed the head of, and a group of space truckers and a ballet company who specialise in very violent ballet whom Lobo manages to aggravate as well.  They all converge just outside L.E.G.I.O.N HQ waiting for them to arrive so they can attack.  This turns out to have been a deliberate gambit by Vril Dox to rid himself of some troublesome elements of society as he lays it out for us at the start of issue three.

Vril Dox: "Started well, too. Lobo took out that problematic police chief - a potential rival.  The paramilitary grannies go after him.  Lobo can take care of them too - and remove another troublesome radical group.   Ditto that for the gang of space biker hoodlums.  The truckers and the Destructo Dance Company were and unexpected bonus... especially with the way the truckers union has been dabbling in politics.  It was so simple.  Lobo kills.  And w walk in a restore order."

But between issue's Lobo and his charge have gone missing, causing Vril Dox to freak out.  But where can Lobo be.  Well, he was knocked out via gas and he and Mrs. Thribb were kidnapped to take part in a spelling bee.  Yes, really.  The aliens are the Orthogrophy Commandos, to whom falls the task of "making the universe free of the ignorant and functionally illterate".  Things look bad for Lobo, but the aliens ask him to spell words like "genocide" and "mutilation".  So as the rest of the contestants are killed off, the final ends up between Lobo and Tribb.  The aliens then say they have to  "Spell, conjugate and suggest suitable antonyms".  This causes Lobo to complain that it isn't fair that he is up against a teacher.  Tribb pipes up that she's been badly abused by Lobo, he even cut her legs off to stop her wandering off.  This offence results in Lobo being even more securely locked down.

Spelling Bee's are srsbznss

However, they haven't put gas jets around him now so he simply bursts out of confinement and horribly murders the aliens, then takes Tribb and goes on his way.  He checks in with the panicking Vril Dox, but tells him he needs a break and is going to Revel-7 the party world.  He says this over an unsecure line, and all the groups waiting for Lobo and Tribb to arrive outside L.E.G.I.O.N's headquarters, fly off to Revel-7 instead, a planet with billions of inhabitants, causing Vril Dox even more upset.  Relaxing and drinking mai-tai's Lobo is unimpressed:

Lobo: *sigh* A friggin' colostomy woulda been more fun than this."

So he decides to liven things up a bit.  And annouces over the planetary tannoy system:

Lobo: "Enjoyin' yer vacations? Good! 'Cuz now it's time for me to start enjoyin' mine. The rules are simple so listen up...in exactly five hours I start killin' anyone still on this mudball."

Yes, basically the plot is resolved by everything exploding.  You expected more?!

And he sits back glugging booze and enjoying the mass panic that has broken out as everyone scrambles to their spaceships. He does say he was only joking to himself, and that he couldn't hang around to kill anyone anyway as he gave his word to Vril Dox (who has just dispatched L.E.G.I.O.N shock troops to deal with the groups waiting for Lobo in orbit around Revel-7) to deliver Tribb alive.  As Lobo leaves the planet with her, all five of the groups after them get blown up either by crashing into each other or smashed to smithereens by the speedy exodus of holidaymakers from the planet, leaving Lobo oblivious to having been followed by them.Lobo delivers Tribb into a depressed Vril Dox's company. 

Vril Dox: ".. you did a good job. I'll take her into custody now."

Lobo: "Thanks.  Thought ya'd never say it. Class dismissed teach."

And he breaks Tribbs neck.

Lobo: "Delivered alive and into your custody - that was the deal - didn't say nothin' 'bout after you had custody!  Have a nice day.. haw haw haw!"

And so ends the first miniseries that redefined Lobo as a totally over the top violent grotesque of a character, whose misdeeds are so gloriously rotten, you can't help liking the bastich.  Well I do anyway.  The next miniseries included in this volume - Lobo's Back - manages to be even more offensive mainly of grounds of religion.  Dealing as it does, with Lobo's extensive misadventures in DC's Judeo-Christian afterlife.  The "story" driving things is even thinner than the first miniseries.  Basically Lobo gets killed while trying to collect a big bounty target and the rest of the story is him trying to get reincarnated just before his death so he can win the fight.  Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

[Just an aside, but the DCU afterlife and general theological issues that come from having characters like Wonder Woman who has ties to the Greek Pantheon and characters like the Spectre who is basically a Christian angel are incredibly fascinating.  Many writers have depicted a very Dante inspired heaven and hell in the DCU, but when masses of aliens died during the crossover series Invasion, they set up their own heaven and hells on the fringes of the Christian heaven and hell.  As well as the Greek Gods actually existing, there are also the New Gods to consider as well. And as this Lobo series will prove, Buddha, Kali and possibly Zeus and Odin are lurking about as well.  I could literally write a thesis on religion in the DCU it's so magnificently complicated yet weirdly inclusive.  Anyway, back to Lobo.]

A duel with added MANLINESS

The miniseries begins with Lobo bemoaning the state of his finances and deciding to take up bounty hunting.  He targets a high value bounty, a man called Loo and confronts him on a planet called Dooly-7.

Lobo: "Yer my kinda guy Loo. Almost makes me feel sorry fer the brutality and carnage that's about to go down.  Almost"

Loo: "Ya ain't taking me in alive Lobo!"

Lobo: "Whatever made yah think I intend to?"

They then exchange a terrific amount of gunfire.  Then start knife fighting when the ammo runs out.  Before Lobo can declare victory, Loo calls out for help from "Brother Feces" and Lobo is blown in half and killed by the dwarf that was hiding in Loo's bag.

"Gaze into the Fist Of Dre..Lobo!"

Lobo arrives in the Afterlife stark naked and brutalises his way to the head of the queue for Judgement.  Turns out that Hell refuses to take Lobo and leaves him as Heaven's problem.  Lobo says they need to reincarnate him on Dooley-7 but his request is refused.  He is assigned an angel spirit guide called Duffiel to take him on his way.

Lobo: "Am I gonna haveta wear those girlie robes?"

Duffiel: "I'm uh.. afraid so.  Um, pardon me for asking but.. bit of a hit with the ladies were you?"

Lobo: "Ain't had no complaints bird-boy!  Think that gag'll get by without being censored?"

Duffiel: "Hard to say.  We've not had an editor up here yet."

Tee hee!  Anyway, Lobo isn't too impressed with Heaven, and soon has grabbed a lute and is singing heavy metal and causing the assembled angels to start slam dancing.  Lobo ends up back in the Afterlife Bureaucrat's office, saying this could all be sorted if they would just send him back to Dooley-7.  The bureacrat refuses and sends Lobo off to hell with an emissary the Jack Kirby creation Etrigan the Demon.  They end up having a punch-up and Lobo is returned to the bureaucrat with the threat that if they don't take him back, all of Hell will move in with Heaven to escape him.

Finally the bureacrat agrees to allow Lobo to reincarnate.  But decides to screw him over at the last moment.  Instead of sending him back to Dooley-7 in Lobo's present, he sends him back to London in 1940 during the worst days of the Blitz.  Also he puts him in a female body.

AAAH My Eyes! My Eyes!!

After some lighthearted jabs at stereotypical cockneys and a brawl with a patriotic superhero, Lobo manages to get hit by a cannon (!) and killed, which sends him back to the processing centre of the Afterlife.  And he is NOT happy.

Lobo: "Three guesses what happened to ta th'last clown ta cross me?  In exactly one minute, if I am still here, I show you."

Lobo is put up for reincarnation again.  But just after he is sent to Dooley-7 one of the lackeys admits to the bureacrat that Czarnian (Lobo's racial name) means something else in an obscure Dooley-7 dialect.  Turns out it's a type of squirrel, which Lobo incarnates as, much to his displeasure.  It's a short-lived incarnation anyway, Lobo is still battling Loo and when he gets blown in half he falls on Squirrel-Lobo and kills him, sending a raging Lobo back to the Afterlife Processing Centre.  He also earns a slap from Death (the Neil Gaimen version believe it or not) for trying to feel her up.  He's greeted back in the afterlife by guns, lots and lots of guns.

Heaven's Christian Soldiers.

The final issue is not drawn by Simon Bisley, but by Christian Alamy doing a creditable job of imitating Bisley's style (so much so that I wondered if it was an alias given the subject matter of this issue, but according to Google Mr. Alamy is real, if somewhat mysterious).  Anyway this issue is mainly one massive long scene of Lobo going apeshit in the Afterlife. He's unimpressed with the first wave of soldiers who attack him.

Lobo: "Keep 'em coming.  I ain't biased.  Hindu, Christian, Jew, Agnostic, Baptist.. yer all the same to tha' main man. Frag fodder!"

More soldiers, including elites and flying ones from various heavens and hells attack as well as a papal parody of Sgt. Rock and Easy Company.  He murderises them all.  It is pointed out that no one is actually dying because they are already dead, but Lobo is making things painful and inconvenient for everyone.  And then, oh dear, as if things haven't got offensive enough, a gang of Gods from various pantheons attack him.

Mere words could not do the blasphemy justice.  I'm an atheist and even I'm offended (slightly).

And where is the Christian God while all this is happening, He isn't fighting, He's got his feet up chortling at the action as He watches it on a celestial television.   When an angel asks Him if He shouldn't be doing something, He tells the angel to "shuddup 'an fetch Me another brewski".  I admit it, I laughed.  Now I am probably going to a Hell I don't believe in. 

Finally after beating down all the other Gods, Lobo makes it back to the Bureaucrat's place, but gets shot with a reincarnation cannon, which does this time send him back to Dooley-7.  But just after he got shot in half.  This time though he stays living and shoots and kills both Feces and Loo.  Then wanders off on his hands, with his legs slung over his shoulder, looking for a stapler.  The miniseries ends with Lobo having immortality granted to him because they never want him back in the Afterlife again.  Which is a character element that stuck over the years, at least until the universal DC reboot of The New 52.  Which must have rebooted the Afterlife as well, or something.

Finally Lobo gets what he wanted and only one jillion beings had to be horribly rekilled to get it.

It goes with out saying that it doesn't just cross the line once, it doesn't just cross the line twice.  It picks the line up and uses it as a skipping rope, all the while cackling madly.  It might be offensive of about eight billion levels, but it's equal opportunity offense, so there's that I guess.  This book is everything the moral guardians who look down on comics as a medium say they are, Frederic Wertham would have a heart attack if he read this.  But it's so gleefully in-your-face about it's crudity and violence that I can't help but enjoy it immensely.  The artwork is a big part of it I admit, but the jokes are blackly comic and the plot's ludicriously simple yet fun.  This is not a book for everyone, and reading it in one go is like binging on a whole packet of biscuits; bad for you and leaves you feeling faintly sick, but well, at least it was doing it with it's tongue rammed firmly in it's cheek.  It's the legion of irony free followers that came soon after that were the problem. Still, we can't blame Lobo for that. I think the inclusion of Lobo battling various Gods was maybe taking things a bit too far, but what is art if not to push boundaries? This is pure fun and I like it, so there and that's about the best justification I can come up with for liking the unjustifiable.