Crush & Lobo: Not Taking Up The Mantle

[Variant cover by Dan Mora]

Crush是DC宇宙中的一个新角色。尽管她曾经是“少年泰坦”的一员，但她仍然需要一个有远见的作家来发挥她的全部潜力。Crush & Loboshows that’s what Mariko Tamaki can and hopefully will be for her. The solo series fully embraces the DC Pride initiative and gives us a few more sides of Crush on a very entertaining journey.

Space can be weird

Tamaki mentioned in oneinterviewthat working with letterer Ariana Maher and illustrators Amancay and Tamra has reminded her how ridiculously fun comics can be, which is easy to feel when readingCrush & Lobo. Every element is there to make it a pleasant read, from the vibrant colors to the narration and the characters. When narrating, Crush is a self-aware character; she constantly talks about the type of character she is, how ridiculous these situations are, and even thanks us for reading. But she doesn’t do that like Deadpool; it’s not a resource to make it seem like knows she’s in a comic book, it’s only a way to make her speak to the reader and turn the story into something even more enjoyable.

玉木也给漫画带来了随机性，让一切变得更有趣。你可以发现一些小细节，如Crush的铃声是她最喜欢的尖叫，但还有更多。由于故事主要发生在太空，玉木可以随心所欲地表现得很奇怪，但仍然可以轻松地将一切融入其中。第三章从治疗小组中的一只外星螳螂说起，在他妈妈吃了他爸爸的头后，他感到孤独。对我来说，这个场景代表了这个故事的“乐趣”的顶峰，只是可能会输给Crush去寻找Lobo，并找到许多奇怪地像他的人。它代表了你在这种环境下的潜力。当然，你不需要在太空中创造伟大的笑话，但如果你有，利用它。这真的让我对续集感到兴奋。我想看到人们最大限度地利用太空的怪异。无论是太空蜥蜴、假Lobos，还是那些本不应该有人类情感的动物和奇怪的爸爸问题，Tamaki都表现出了她的创造力，她可以运用大量元素让故事变得更有趣。

Crush: Maybe not the best girlfriend ever

Like many coming-of-age stories, Crush is an edgy teenager that doesn’t fit in and is in self-destruct mode. She just quit the Titans, doesn’t talk to any of them, and keeps beating aliens up for her whole day. Her only meaningful connection is with Katie, her girlfriend. The first chapter is the cutest thing ever; Katie seems like a really easy-going person that loves Crush. And both of them can be themselves around each other. Saying the dance scene (in the picture above) is beautiful is an understatement. That’s why I wanted to see a lot more of Crush and Katie hanging out and having fun together, but that’s not the point of the book.

By the end of the issue and throughout the whole series, you’ll realize Crush was emotionally unavailable and didn’t get what Katie needed many times. Their relationship is far from perfect. Crush is not prepared to do a lot of the usually necessary things in a relationship, like meeting Katie’s parents; she tries to use her job as an excuse to avoid them, or she simply runs away. Crush has numerous flashbacks in which she somehow hurt Katie. Clearly, Crush needs to grow and understand more about herself, and that’s what the series is about.

Crush知道她需要处理自己的问题，甚至Katie也表示如果她这么做，他们就有机会了，而她的主要目标是Lobo，所以Crush去监狱见他。即使在被骗并不得不抓住他来拯救自己之后，她脑子里唯一想的就是凯蒂。很明显，她有多在乎她，她没有很好地处理分手(或生活中的其他事情)。Crush认为自己就像Lobo一样;一个不值得信任的暴力的人，只会伤害别人，简单地说，是最坏的。

When Crush meets Julia, an alien that loves Lobo and apparently only lives to please him, she does her best to convince Julia that Lobo is only going to hurt her. Unfortunately, Julia’s naivety and optimistic view of things don’t let her believe anything Crush says. To Julia, Lobo isn’t bad and she is the only one that truly understands him.

Crush在Lobo身上看到了自己，在Julia身上看到了Katie。在某种程度上，她是对的。如果你想让血和睾丸激素从你的书中喷涌而出，那么Lobo就是Crush，茱莉亚是凯蒂最甜蜜最天真的版本。这些成年人是Crush和Katie可能成为的那种人，但不是他们自己。暗恋对象不一定是她的父亲;她还有机会。有机会向凯蒂道歉，见她父母，送她礼物，做她以前没做过的事。她可以做得更好。Katie知道这一点，并且仍然关心Crush，这就是她一直给Crush发短信的原因。

Everything Crush goes through in this comic helps her realize maybe it’s not too late to be better. And Lobo plays a big role in that realization, so let’s focus a bit on the Main Man.

Annihilation

You might have noticed I haven’t talked much about Lobo for a comic calledCrush & Lobo, but that’s because he actually doesn’t appear a lot, even though he is relevant. His importance to the comic is what he means for Crush and their father-daughter relationship.

Father-daughter dynamics are pretty popular in media. We have the perfect examples inThe Last of Uswith Joel and Ellie and in the X-Men comics with Logan and Laura. In both, the detached parent figure with a traumatic past turns into someone better thanks to the daughter. With time, Joel starts dropping a few hints that he’s beginning to really like Ellie and that she’s becoming someone important to him. The story seemed to be only about Joel dropping a girl from one place to another, but it developed into a tale about a father allowing himself to love and be loved again and sacrificing everything – even the rest of the world – to save someone he loves.

洛根和劳拉的关系非常相似;他们之间的关系变得非常重要，劳拉继承了金刚狼的衣钵，尊重她父亲的遗产。But, in a way,Crush & Loboexists to break that dynamic. Even though it seemed that Lobo had changed, everything was a ruse. No matter what happens, he will never become someone better or sacrifice anything for his daughter. For Crush, being like him is a curse.

Lobo邀请Crush去监狱探望他，并承诺他已经改变了。但他把他的监控芯片植入了她身上，让所有的机器人守卫以为Crush是她的父亲。这主要是一个笑话，但每个人都把她看成是Lobo，有更深的含义。尽管狱友们知道她不完全是她爸爸，但他们还是表现得像她爸爸一样，叫她“新狼人”或“其他狼人”，表明她是如何看待自己的。对于她自己和其他人来说，《Crush》只是Lobo的一个投影。她不可能比他好，因为她就是他。他的敌人就是她的敌人。他的缺点就是她的缺点。这就是为什么当和茱莉亚说话时，她唯一想到的就是她伤害凯蒂的时间;洛博毫不犹豫地滥用和利用别人，他是人渣，所以——在她眼里——她也是。

在抓住她的父亲后，Crush再次被骗，但现在是被监狱的典狱长骗了。在上一期中，Crush终于与她的父亲组队，并意识到他们唯一能一起完成的事情就是毁灭。他建议他们应该继续合作，但很快改变了主意，用枪指着Crush。她几乎接受了他的提议，但拒绝了，还用枪指着他，所以他们分道扬镳。这可能感觉有点虎头蛇尾，但不接受和她的父亲一起去，她拒绝了她和他一样的想法，也拒绝了对她来说太晚的想法。

我不太喜欢这部漫画的一点是，基本上在整个系列中，我们看到Crush把自己和她的爸爸比较，以及他们有多糟糕，但我们没有看到她改变观点并意识到她还有机会变得更好的很多时刻——只有在最后一期。但她也知道，她不能通过撒谎来成为一个更好的人，她实际上需要付出努力。所以我希望我们能在续集中看到更多这样的情节。

接下来是什么?

At the end of the last chapter, we have been presented with some elements that will be part of Crush’s next story. She finally texts Katie, but isn’t given a definitive answer about their relationship; the new warden of the prison hires her to find and arrest escaped prisoners; also, the weird pink alien she fought a few times in the series calls someone and tells them to deal with Crush.

Crush is kind of like an empty canvas; her “world” is still small. Mariko Tamaki can, for example, develop what Crush will want to do in the future, her love life, and friends (connect more with Emiko or other characters). There’s a lot more that can be done and I want to be here to read it. To me,Crush & Loborepresents a good start to something that can be great.

Sources:

https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2021/06/01/crush-lobo-finds-joy-in-its-very-imperfect-protagonists