Lobo (Dell Comics)
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- For the comic book character Lobo from DC Comics, see Lobo (DC Comics)
Lobo is a fictional Western comic book hero who is the medium's first African-American character to headline his own series.
Lobo starred in Dell Comics' little-known but groundbreaking, two-issue series Lobo (Dec. 1965 & Sept. 1966), also listed as Dell Comics #12-438-512 and #12-439-610 in the company's quirky numbering system. Co-Created by writer D. J. Arneson and artist Tony Tallarico, it chronicled the Old West adventures of a wealthy, unnamed African-American gunslinger called "Lobo" by the first issue's antagonists. On the foreheads of vanquished criminals, Lobo would leave the calling card of a gold coin imprinted with the images of a wolf and the letter "L".
In an interview Jamie Coville in Collector Times, Tallarico cleared up the misconception that the writer was unknown. According to Tallarico, he and writer D.J. Arneson co-created the character based on an idea he had. Tallarico further states that he plotted the comic and Arneson scripted it. "I created and D. J. and I, we wrote it together. It wasn't really writing, it was interpreting the character, I guess we wrote it." Coville's Clubhouse interview
While Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor Atlas Comics had published the African tribal-chief feature "Waku, Prince of the Bantu" — the first known mainstream comic-book feature with a Black star, albeit not African-American — it was one of four regular features in each issue of the omnibus title, Jungle Tales (Sept. 1954 - Sept. 1955). Comic books' first known African-American superhero, Marvel's Falcon, was introduced in 1969[1], but there would be no Black star of his or her own comic until 1972, with Marvel's Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, followed in 1973 by Marvel's Black Panther (introduced as a supporting character in a 1966 issue of Fantastic Four) in Jungle Action.
