Batman/Lobo: Deadly Serious #1 of 2

Written by, drawn by and cover art by Sam Kieth

DC Comics $5.99 

YES!

Okay, so I was really excited when I saw this in my pile on Wednesday.  First of all, I was obsessed with Kieth’s The Maxx when I was younger.  I stopped reading comic books around the age of 16 when I started to become obsessed with music, but I continued to reread the Maxx series and eventually ended up buying a bootlegged version of the television series from Ebay.  It was well worth it.  I had noticed though, in my previous two years of rediscovering comic books, that Sam Kieth seemed to be missing entirely from the scene, but Jim Lee, the Kuberts, Chris Claremont and most of the people who were making my favorite books in the nineties.

So, again, I was seriously fucking jazzed when I saw this in Previews a few months back.  It comes at a time when I’ve been reading Grant Morrison Batman for almost a year, so I feel like I’m not at a point where Batman is strange territory for me.  Another great writer/artist on a character I’ve come to like quite a bit.  Excellent.

So, Sam Kieth, Batman, Lobo, Spaceships, Alien disease that makes women turn into homicidal maniacs, explosions, lots of guns, aliens.  As long as you aren’t expecting a super serious Batman story, this is made of 100% win.  Batman, against his will, is brought to a spaceship light years from earth to stop a disease that makes women act out and go on insane killing sprees.  All the men have left the ship and so all of these women are being killed.  Kieth’s women are, of course, beautiful and the story is fun as well as morbidly funny.  Of course, Lobo just happens to be there for some reason, trying to make some money.

Although this is only a two issue series, it’s being published in the prestige format, so each issue is 48 pages.  That means this won’t be a short little story, it will be almost 100 pages, easily the size of four or five issues published as a regular comic series.  I think it’s going to be a blast.