DC Wants To Publish Frank Quitely's Lobo Comic From Thirty Years Ago

Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Alan Grant, Dan Raspler, frank quitely, Lawrence Ganem, lobo

DC Wants To Publish Frank Quitely's Lobo Comic From Thirty Years Ago

DC Comics now wants to publish the Alan Grant/Frank Quitely Lobo comic book they didn't publish thirty years ago

Published Fri, 01 May 2026 09:57:10 -0500
by Rich Johnston
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Article Summary

• DC is exploring publication of Frank Quitely and Alan Grant’s shelved Lobo one-shot, abandoned in the mid-1990s.
• Frank Quitely says DC asked about his old Lobo pages, with a plan to redraw the story and print both versions.
• The unpublished Lobo comic became infamous for its explicit Hugh Hefner parody, nudity, and outrageous climax.
• Alan Grant also revealed another lost Lobo story, Lobo’s Dog, reportedly binned by DC over the dog’s anatomy.

In 2009, Bleeding Cool mentioned a whole bunch of comics that had been completed, or had work started on, but hadn't been published. In the 27 years since, a couple have. But one of them was  Alan Grant and Frank Quitely's Lobo one-shot called alternatively Lobo-By-Blows,  The Hand Job, The Hand-To-Hand Job or It's A Man's World. According to Alan Grant, "The Hand Job featured Lobo being hired to find the kidnappers of a Hugh Hefner-like figure, the publisher of the galaxy's raunchiest porn mags. For about half the book, Lobo appeared naked. The climax of the story featured 10,000 asteroid miners masturbating." And it was concluded, sitting in a drawer in DC's New York offices, unpublished, since the mid-nineties.

Later that year, we got another description from Alan Grant, saying, "It's a parody of Hugh Hefner. The guy gets kidnapped by this male-liberation group because his exposure of the female body is responsible for female lib. This is one of those Iron John male-bonding groups who kidnap him, and they're gonna torture him, and Lobo is hired to get him back. It was actually quite funny, but it's never going to see the light of day." Any chance I get, I mention that this comic book exists. And it seems that maybe someone at DC Comics has been reading me.

But it was the Frank Quitely story that suddenly got a news buzz last month. Jake Zawlacki interviewed Frank Quitely for The Comics Journal, who told him, "I was talking to Larry Ganem recently, he's DC's VP in Talent Relations. I've known Larry for decades, and I really like him. We were chatting over dinner in the summer, he was saying, "What about that Lobo story you did for us all those years ago, have you still got those pages?" This was a Lobo one-shot. I think it was 24 pages. Alan Grant wrote it, and I pencilled it all out in blue line. When I sent it off in a FedEx box, it was absolutely the best thing I'd ever done to that point in my life. Dan Raspler was the editor, and he sent me eight, ten, twelve pages of notes for the first twelve pages of boards that he got, and he said, "I'll leave it there because I don't want to swamp you," and it was basically that these are great drawings, but start with an establishing shot for this fight. We don't need to see two full figures in medium shot for every punch that's thrown after that. Zoom in and the fist knocking a tooth out. Tilt the camera. He sent me all these pages of notes for things I should have done differently or should have thought about at the layout stage. Larry was like, "Just print it the way it is anyway because you were younger, you didn't know what you were doing." But I actually feel to do that, it'd be more satisfying for me and would be more useful for other younger artists if I actually redrew the story the way I would do it now… and publish both side by side… Yeah, it's not quite in the cards yet, but it's on the back burner."

"The Lobo story I mentioned earlier on was before I had thought storytelling is any more than trying to make it clear and easy to follow and interesting looking, but I didn't really have a full enough understanding of what story telling was about."

That is, of course, if they still have the pages from that move from New York to Burbank. Chris Arrant of Popverse states that he "obtained a copy of the letter, and in it Raspler admits that he might be going too far, saying "I'll stop the notes here for now, because I'm very worried about freaking you out. Like everyone else, I'm knocked out by your style and drawing ability. But unlikely many of your other editors, I feel strongly enough about your layouts that I want to work with you on them." I am getting flashbacks to Tom Brevoort not going forward with that proposed Alan Moore Ant-Man comic that has suddenly been rediscovered on Reddit...

And it wasn't the only completed missing Lobo story by Alan Grant, though this one was from an unnamed artist. "We did a 36-page Lobo's Dog special. At the start of the story, Lobo falls into quicksand, and he's in danger of drowning – even his great powers can't get him out of quicksand – so he gives the dog these detailed instructions – "You've gotta go do this, get that and save me". And the dog, by the time you've turned over the page, the dog's seen this female dog (laughter). So it's away humping, and anyway, it gets involved its own adventure, and it's only on the second to last page, it remembers it has to go back and save Lobo. Anyway, the artist drew the dog complete with bollocks in every picture, and in the pictures where the dog has a secondary role, like something else is happening, he's drawn the dog just sitting casually scratching itself and licking itself! And DC have paid for it, but now they've binned it – they're never going to put it in an issue because the dog's got bollocks! Oh, it's unbelievable…" Any chance we could get that revived as well? It is Lobo's year after all… and it does sound like the dog's bollocks

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