There are things holding 'Crush & Lobo' back from being overall good, certainly. Before reading, I knew very little about Lobo - I had certainly never read a comic that featured him - and I'd first heard of Crush from 'DC Brave and Bold! Female DC Super Heroes Take on the Universe', and she sounded really interesting to me, hence why I decided to buy this comic when I happened upon it on a comics shelf in my local pop culture and entertainment shop. What luck and chance, eh?
Also it is written by Mariko Tamaki, and I've read a lot of comics by her.
The comic itself contains a shit ton of meta humour and fourth wall breaking jokes from the get-go. These include making assumptions about the reader and insulting them, at least with a rude term, like saying, "Shut up, I know this makes no sense, I'm not good at this whole life story telling thing". Understandably, this won't be to everyone's tastes and can be off-putting. It can be cynical and self-deprecating - absolutely nothing is safe and sacred here - though whether this is funny or just obnoxious and desperate is, again, up to the individual reader's tastes. There are plot holes, structural flaws, logic lapses, even for an OTT comedy comic, and most damningly, the ending leaves something to be desired. There's a static status quo stuck to (wow there's a tongue twister) for the DC canon, and a sequel hook, that deliberately leave behind no moral, no satisfying payoff to the whole comic, making it rather pointless.
And yet...I kind of love it.
I've found I can't get 'Crush & Lobo' out of my head and my heart. Despite everything, I love this unique and chaotic creation.
To start with, the art is gorgeous and amazing, among the best I've seen in a superhero comic. The colours, the shades, the details, everything from the settings to the action looks great. Everyone looks great. Crush's design and expressions are just *chef's kiss*, and Lobo...even with the limited knowledge I have of him, I can confidently say that he must have never looked this freakishly, strikingly detailed. Including when he gets naked (yes, he gets naked in at least seven pages in the comic, though thankfully we are spared a certain little detail). Emotional and characteristic expressions are everything and everywhere. Both the humans and the various and multiple alien designs look fantastic.
The comic is so much fun. It's full of action and humour, and there is not a single dull moment; not a single dull, half-arsed panel. Like in any proper superhero comic, there are crazy, out-of-this-world concepts (there have to be, it is mostly set in space!) all over the shop. It moves on in a constant momentum and rush, but still finds time for pathos, introspection and reflection, and some character development for Crush. Mainly revolving around her relationship with her human girlfriend Katie, which is on the rocks.
Crush and Katie are polar and solar opposites, and we don't see much of them together, but there is evidently heart there. Sweetness too. You can see why Crush would need someone like the normal human Katie in her life. But Crush, the self-destructive and chaotic gothic punk with daddy issues, is not a good girlfriend. She is borderline neglectful, and toxic, and maybe the too-good-for-this-universe Katie deserves better. Maybe they do need space, for a while...
Now, onto the number one reason I bought 'Crush & Lobo' - Crush. I wanted to know more about her, and couldn't find much anywhere, including the internet, bizarrely. Crush's fourth wall annihilating narration boxes in this comic include telling readers to search more about her online to spare herself from exposition dumping out of laziness and carelessness, but no. That one's definitely not funny. There's no Wikipedia page on her, nothing. In the comic, her earth name, Xiomara Rojas, is not mentioned, and all we get to know about her, origin wise, is: she was raised by criminal human parents, she is indeed Lobo's daughter, and is among the last of her alien race the Czarnians (Lobo killed them), and she was a Teen Titan.
However, whether it is reading about her in another book, or in this book, I am newly intrigued by this newish DC antiheroine. A newish DC LBGTQ antiheroine.
Crush is cool. Verycool. She's like a teenage alien fighter punk Harley Quinn, with muscles and hundreds of travel mugs and no shits to give. She is terribly flawed, but that only makes her more interesting and believable. Her brash and blunt company won't be to everyone's liking, but as a flawed fictional female who says fuck you to the patriarchy's conditioned cultural idea of likeability in females, she is a breath of fresh air.
I'd say good for her if she doesn't want to turn out like her evil, brutish, obnoxious, murderous, irredeemable, one dimensional space thug of a father, but at the same time she wants the freeing aspect of his lifestyle. No responsibility, no accountability (for now, anyway) - an adventurer who is violent and ill-tempered and is running away from her problems and issues for the time being - it is who she chooses to be.
Above all, Crush is a teenager. Allowed to be selfish and make mistakes. Room to grow. All that jazz.
Or am I reaching, and doing mental gymnastics to try to reasonably justify my love for this stupid comic? Do I care? No, I don't think so. I don't think I should.
It's a fun and funny comic with a badass female lead, what do you want from me!
'Crush & Lobo' doesn't bother me so much. My infatuation is mostly emotional, I admit. That there shockingly isn't anything intrinsically, particularly meanspirited, cruel, nasty and toxic about it - it truly wants to have fun - has soften me to it, as well. It doesn't seem to have come from a bad place. The art, the craziness, the no-fucks-given humour, the heart, Crush herself as a new favourite DC character of mine, and even Lobo, and the seriously fucked up and complicated relationship the father and daughter have (while Crush is the protagonist, Lobo and his time with her do receive the appropriate page time; for it is titled 'Crush & Lobo').
A tiny fraction of the WTF-ness presented in the comic - Crush eats a life-sized cookie of herself, giant alien praying mantises exist, Lobo has an obsessed alien suburban housewife girlfriend, Crush's reappearing enemy is a Krang/MODOK-like barista, space lizards love her, and she ends up accepting a bounty hunter job from an evil space prison that had tortured her throughout the story, with hardly any hesitation. But she wants an extortionate fee, of course. Unlike her father, she is not a bounty hunter for the murderous hell of it; she's good at it, but she's also got mouths to feed.
Another tongue-in-cheek gag and fourth wall destroyer - Goodreads. Seriously. There is a site called Goodreading in this comic's universe. It's funny and clever in many ways.
My review has become as messy and messed up as the comic itself. Oh well, in the vein of Crush and her attitude, who cares?
'Crush & Lobo', my recent guilty pleasure.
A three star book I still really like and is a keeper? Now there's something unique for me.
Final Score: 3/5
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