While Lobo searches for Death Metal at the request of Lex Luthor, he may have inadvertently brought back some forgotten heroes.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the story “Part Three: Lobo Land” in Dark Nights: Death Metal Infinite Hour Exxxtreme #1 by Sam Humphries, Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Chris Sotomayer, and Dave Sharpe, on sale now.
Lobo is back in a Dark Nights: Death Metal tie-in that shows just how important the Main Man has been during the course of this event. Through acquiring some of the most powerful material in the Multiverse, Lobo creates his own smaller version of the DC Universe while at the same time bringing back a hero from Milestone Comics who hasn’t been around for some time.
When tracking down his latest bounty, Lobo comes face-to-face with one of the darkest versions of Batman yet: The Batman Who Frags. This is a twisted version of Batman who injected himself with Czarnian DNA. During his battle with him, Lobo is whisked away by Lex Luthor who hires him to save the Multiverse. Luthor needs the Main Man to find the remaining rare and powerful Death Metal that is left in the Multiverse because this, Luthor tells him, could save everything.
After acquiring some Death Metal on Blackhawk Island, Lobo starts playing around with it and creates his own pocket-sized version of the DC Universe in which every hero is a version of Lobo himself. Jonathan and Martha Kent open a crashed capsule to find a baby Lobo inside (flicking them the bird, nonetheless), a young Bruce Wayne watches his parents gunned down by a crazy Czarnian; and a young Czarnian Wonder Woman dives in the ocean to save some dolphins while letting Stever Trevor drown. As Lobo creates his own world, he can’t contain his excitement. “Lobo Land,” the Main Man shouts out in excitement. “A whole pocket universe fer me to rewrite! All I gotta do is think into th’ death metal, an’ all my awesome ideas come ta life!” In the final panels of Death Metal: Infinite Hour Exxxtreme #1, all the heroes he created attack and bring down The Batman Who Frags, including a Lobo-ized version of the Milestone Comics hero, Icon.
Milestone Media, which created Milestone Comics, was founded in 1993 by a group of African-American artists and writers who believed that minorities were underrepresented in American comics. Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T. Dingle set out to change this underrepresentation and created many heroes who were eventually incorporated into the DC Universe, including Static, Rocket, and Icon.
Icon, created by McDuffie and Mark Bright, has a similar background to Superman and arrives on Earth in 1839 after the alien starliner he was on malfunctioned and exploded, jettisoning his life-pod into the middle of a cotton field in the American South. His life-pod altered his appearance to mimic the first sentient life-form who discovered him, who was an enslaved black woman named Miriam. She found the alien child and adopted him and gave him the name Augustus Freeman.