James Gunn Reveals Jason Momoa As a Comic Accurate Lobo (Sans Space Dolphins)
The Maiden of Might better watch out, because the Main Man has arrived.
The Main Man has come to the DCU. We’ve known for a while now that Jason Momoa would be sticking in the world of DC Comics once James Gunn and Peter Safran took over. And we’ve also known that he would be trading in the orange skivvies of Aquaman and taking the role of Lobo, the bounty hunter for Supergirl. But outside of a smoky silhouette in the Supergirl trailer, we have not yet seen what Momoa’s take on the Last Czarnian would be.
But now we know. A reel that Gunn released to his Instagram follows a giddy Momoa as he drives to the set and ends with a close up him driving his motorcycle through flames, hooked chain in tow. A close up on his face reveals everything you’d expect: dirty hair, unkempt beard, a blue domino pattern around red eyes, and a stogie protruding from his pointed teeth. Yep, that’s Lobo. Except… where are the space dolphins?
Okay, in all fairness to Supergirl and Gunn, Lobo did not have a love of space dolphins when he first appeared back in 1983’s Omega Men #3, written by Roger Slifer and penciled by the great Keith Giffen. Of course, little of the Lobo who became a cult hit in the ’90s was present in that first issue. Sure, he was still an intergalactic bounty hunter with a space bike and a bad attitude, and he did have his distinctive ‘stache and eye markings, but that version of Lobo wore purple and yellow tights, hardly the most intimidating look.
Over the years, Giffen would return to Lobo and develop him further into a parody of the extreme edge-lord superheroes that became all the rage in the 1990s. In the two miniseries that Giffen did with co-writer Alan Grant and illustrator Simon Bisley, along with the 1991 Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special—in which the Easter Bunny hires the Main Man to slaughter Santa Claus because Christmas is more popular than Easter—Lobo brought to DC Comics a level gratuitous violence one previously only found in British superhero satires like Judge Dredd and Marshal Law.
Those storylines established Lobo as a completely amoral person who lives by one code: he always keeps his word. Outside of that, he’ll kill any bastich (to use his preferred epithet) for money and, thanks to his ability to regenerate from a single drop of blood (a power intended as a joke about Wolverine‘s healing factor… introduced about 15 years before Wolverine canonically regenerates from a single drop of blood), he can never be killed.
But just because Lobo couldn’t die didn’t mean that his stories lacked for killing. We learn that the name Lobo means “he who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it” on Czarnia and that he’s the last survivor of his planet, not because it exploded like Krypton but rather because Lobo murdered every inhabitant in grade school after a teacher flunked him.
Lobo’s predilection for extreme cartoon violence made him a hit in the ’90s. However, it also kept him feeling fairly one-note, and the character fell out of favor in the 2000s. So unpopular was the character that DC tried to reboot him in 2011, introducing a thin, serious-minded and somewhat honorable version who claimed to real Lobo and introduced himself by beheading the Lobo we’ve known for decades. Ironically, that take went over so poorly that when the hulking psychopath Lobo returned to kill the spindly imposter, his fan base grew again.
However, as prevalent as Lobo has been in DC comics over the past decade, he did not appear in the miniseries Supergirl: The Woman of Tomorrow, which is the source of the upcoming Supergirl movie. So how, exactly, do they plan to bring him into the film?
The most obvious answer is that Lobo has probably been hired to kill Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), the murderer that young Ruthye Marye (Eve Ridley) is trying to find, with the help of Supergirl (Milly Alcock). Probably, Lobo will cross Supergirl’s path, the two will duke it out, and Supergirl will have to find some way to convince Lobo to change the terms of his agreement.
All of that is fine, and Momoa certainly has both the look and the attitude to make a remorseless killer fun to watch. But however Supergirl plans to use Lobo, they had better get his space dolphins on screen, if only to help Momoa better transition from hanging out with an octopus in Aquaman to hunting down bastiches as Lobo.
Supergirl (and Lobo) arrives in theaters on June 26, 2026.