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[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_1819875_lobs.png]]

->''[[CatchPhrase Aloha]]''

''Lobster Random'' is a comic strip that ran in ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'', created by Simon Spurrier and Carl Critchlow.

Lobster Random was once just an average grunt. After being wounded in combat (his first gunfight no less), he is "volunteered" into the [[BadassArmy Lobster squad]] and given a pair of lobster claws grafted onto his hips. The result of this is [[ImplacableMan he can no longer feel pain]] nor [[TheSleepless does he need to sleep]]. After winning the war, his entire unit [[SoleSurvivor barring himself]] are wiped out in an explosion at a celebratory party. Lob himself is discharged and becomes a [[TortureTechnician torturer]] [[PsychoForHire for hire]].

After many years traveling the galaxy dispensing pain, he is apprehended and sent to prison. Our story begins as Lob is about to be executed by use of a memory regression machine when he is rescued with a job offer.

The strip is known for its BlackComedy and its protagonist is in keeping with the comic's tradition of avoiding square jawed handsome hero types.

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!!Tropes specific to ''Lobster Random'':

* AppliedPhlebotinum:
** The claws. It turns out that the mind implants given to the Lobster Squad didn't actually do anything and that it's the claws that are responsible for the Lobster Squad's immunity to pain and lack of need for sleep.
** The mind spheres used by the Skeaxxians against human soldiers, causing them to have [[LotusEaterMachine vivid nightmares]] and kill each other. The Lobster Squad's lack of need for sleep means that they don't dream and, therefore are immune.
* AntiHero: Lob makes [[Film/EscapeFromNewYork Snake Plissken]] look like ComicBook/CaptainAmerica. He's a professional TortureTechnician whose main motivation is money and only avoids being a full on VillainProtagonist because many of the story's villains are even worse than he is.
* AnArmAndALeg: Lob loses one of his claws when Cadmium Redd slices it off. Lob replaces it with [[ArtificialLimbs a mechanical claw]] until he loses that and his other claw on the Vort. Also, his left arm has been amputated on ''three'' separate occasions. And twice he has done this himself.
* AxeCrazy: Lob can go a bit mental at times when he's fighting. He puts it down to his lack of sleep.
* BecauseImGoodAtIt: Lob notes that this is one of the three reasons he tortures people for a living. The other two are the fact that he [[{{Sadist}} enjoys it]] and the other being that he can't do anything else.
* BigBad: Warathraal is attempting to invade Lob's universe through various means by using Cadmium Redd and the Lobster troopers.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: While Lob is far from a NiceGuy, unlike the guys he's up against, he's not trying to raise armies of {{Super Soldier}}s to take over the universe or destroy the fabric of reality.
* BrainsAndBrawn: Played with with Hogg and Pinn. Turns out the skinny guy with the massive head, Pinn, is the brawn, while the massive pig-like creature, Hogg, is the brains.
* BountyHunter: Hogg and Pinn are constantly pursuing Random, as he has a rather large bounty on his head ever since being busted out of prison. Lob does a deal with them, where they get the 20 million bounty on Rex Ferris in exchange for leaving him be. Earlier in that particular story, Random himself briefly considers cashing in on the bounty on Ferris before discovering that the contents of his vault are worth a lot more.
* CombatPragmatist: Random does in no way play fair. When one ArrogantKungFuGuy in a cult attempts to show off his flashy techniques, Lob simply [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe cuts him in half]] with one of his claws while he's posturing.
* ConjoinedTwins: Rex Ferris has ''a T-Rex'' as one. It was part of an experiment to bring back dinosaurs for the purpose of studies or theme parks.
* CutLexLuthorACheck: Mister Copious [[spoiler: a.k.a. Sergeant Diaz]] plans to create a new army of lobster troopers in order to drop mindspheres into various facilities in order to rob them so he can become rich enough to surround himself with adoring socialites (he explains that he can't use droids due to EMP grenades). However, by this time, he has already amassed enough resources to hire mercenaries capable of busting a death row prisoner out of a maximum security prison and breaking into another facility to bust out Klick, as well as having a team to carry out research on both Random and the mindsphere.
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Damn near everyone. Leads to a GambitPileup in the third story, where Lob and Miss Teak keep screwing each other over until Lob [[CrazyPrepared pre-emptively betrays her]] by showing Rex Ferris' T-Rex conjoined twin that he won't taste very good. The beginning of the second story has Lob betray his employer because he's bored.
* DeadpanSnarker: Random between his insults to people and his narration.
* DrillSergeantNasty: Sergeant Lobster Diaz gives a fairly standard DrillSergeantNasty speech to the Lobster Squad when they've been inducted. Deconstructed in that underneath, he just wants to be liked.
%%* ExaltedTorturer
* ExpositionFairy: Oddly done. Random's execution is performed like this. It essentially shows his entire life in reverse, starting from his time on DeathRow and finishing with his earliest childhood memories.
* FateWorseThanDeath: Random tortures [[spoiler: Sergeant Diaz]] by surgically implanting a mindsphere into his brain, leaving him unable to come into contact with anybody. [[spoiler: He later grants him a MercyKill.]]
* FeelNoPain: One of the effects of the lobster claws is that Random feels absolutely no pain whatsoever. It makes him a more effective torturer, since he feels no empathy towards his victims.
* FromCamouflageToCriminal: Lob becomes a professional torturer for hire after getting discharged from the army, although a flashback implies he was a petty criminal before he enlisted.
* FutureSlang: Mostly swear words (Frag seems to be the most common one), but a few other terms show up.
* GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke: Subverted. Turns out that the only modifications made to the Lobster Squad that actually did anything were [[spoiler: the claws, which came from another plane of reality.]]
* AGodAmI: [[spoiler: Cadmium Redd]] and Warathraal. The former becomes a demigod by sacrificing one of Random's claws at an altar to the latter on Nix. Warathraal is a Lobster god who is trying to invade reality through the Vort.
* GrumpyOldMan: Lob is a crotchety individual, not helped by the fact that he hasn't slept in around three decades.
* {{Hammerspace}}: Random's bag in the first story allows him to pull out anything as he needs it. Lampshaded when he is examining a guy he needs to torture, explaining how chakras can be used in torture, before dismissing it and hauling out a massive sledgehammer and proceeding to beat his victim with it.
* HeroicComedicSociopath: Lob. He even admits that he's practically psychotic due to being unable to sleep. Of course, it's PlayedForLaughs.
* IJustWantToHaveFriends: Sergeant Diaz's motivation is just to be liked. Being TheNeidermeyer and a generally insufferable {{Jerkass}} makes this difficult for him. [[NeverMyFault He blames Random for the rest of the Lobster Squad not liking him]] [[spoiler: and his EvilPlan as Mister Copious is to use Mind Spheres to rob various planets of their wealth just so he can surrounded by adoring socialites.]]
* ImplacableMan: Lob feels no pain as a result of his modification. It also leaves him with no empathy towards his victims.
* InterspeciesRomance: Random is a mechaphile (or "mekfag"). That is, he is only sexually attracted to robots, whether they be male, female or otherwise.
* LastOfHisKind: Double subverted. Lob notes that he's the last survivor of the Lobster Squad. The BigBad of the first story, Mister Copious, turns out to be [[spoiler: Sergeant Diaz]], who Lob abandons on a desert world [[spoiler: with a mindsphere implanted in his head]]. Later, Lob goes back to grant him a MercyKill.
* MachoMasochism: At the beginning of "Tooth And Claw", Random is working for a despot who gets off on being tortured. However, Random finds that torturing someone who actually wants to be hurt is no fun and promptly betrays him to the local resistance for a fat bundle of cash. The guy does have a weakness, however. Tickling is torturous to him, as Lob reveals to the rebels before he leaves.
* MeaningfulName: Rex Ferris what with being a conjoined twin with a T-Rex. The Lobster squad could also count, seeing as their first names were all changed to Lobster.
* MultiArmedAndDangerous:
** The Lobster Squad were fitted with lobster claws grafted to their hips. Cadmium Redd explains that people asked him why he bothered, as the idea was at best AwesomeButImpractical, but they turn out to be the source of the Lobster Squad's abilities to neither need sleep nor feel pain.
** One of the mercenaries who breaks Random out of prison in the first story has four arms.
* TheNeidermeyer: Sergeant Diaz is a hardass sergeant who is disliked by the rest of the Lobster Squad. For example, when Lobster Quarter gets blown up, Diaz doesn't even allow his buddies to scoop up what's left of him. Deconstructed in that Diaz actually [[IJustWantToHaveFriends just wants to be liked]] and [[NeverMyFault blames Random for the Lobster Squad not liking him]].
* OnlyInItForTheMoney: Lob, full stop. At one point, he turns against the [[ItMakesSenseInContext masochistic dictator he's working for]] because the rebels offer him money. That and he's bored by hurting someone who wants to be hurt.
* OutlawCouple: Random and Mrs Redd become this for a while. Their modus operandi involves Mrs Redd's robotic body disguising itself as a live woman and seducing billionaires into marriage, after which Random would torture them into a huge divorce settlement.
* PsychoForHire: A rare case of one being TheProtagonist. Lob's post-military career has basically been being hired by various criminal elements to extract information from people or get them to do things they don't want to.
* {{Robosexual}}: Lob starts out in a relationship with a robot named Click. He sleeps with various droids throughout the strip and shows no interest in anyone biological.
* ScarsAreForever: The healing process that heals Lob's [[spoiler: burns from the Vort and gives him [[ItMakesSenseInContext his fourth left arm]].]] still can't get rid of that x-shaped scar on his forehead.
* ScienceIsUseless: Nothing electrical will work [[spoiler: on The Vort.]]
* ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Lob's experiences have left him hilariously cynical.
* ShellShockedVeteran: Nix brings back some bad memories from the war for Lob. He's not entirely keen to go back there after his experiences there and has a FreakOut when he goes back, hallucinating his dead comrades and the battles around him. Doesn't help when Redd brings them all back as zombies.
* ShoutOut: ''The Vort'' hits many of the same beats as ''[[ComicBook/JudgeDredd The Dead Man]]'': The story is credited to a PenName to throw the reader off the scent and told from the narrative perspective of a new character who encounters an amnesiac who has been very badly burnt who we discover at the end of the story is a CanonCharacterAllAlong. Said story immediately leads into a major storyline.
* SuperSoldier: The Lobster Squad were modified for war against the Skeaxxians, who kept dropping Mind Spheres on regular human soldiers. The Mind Spheres cause hallucinatory nightmares, causing humans to kill each other in blind panic. Thanks to [[spoiler: the claws]], the Lobsters are immune to subconscious warfare, in addition to not needing to sleep and never feeling pain.
* TortureTechnician: Lob extracts information for clients by means of torture for financial gain. The fact that he can't feel pain himself leaves him completely unable to empathise with any of his victims.
* VillainProtagonist: Lob is a deeply unpleasant individual who is a professional TortureTechnician only concerned with making money and clanging droids.
* WarIsHell: The war backstory from Random's youth is over the planet Nixx's proximity to a wormhole. The humans and Skeaxxians spend years fighting over it, with heavy casualties on both sides (Random states that the rainforests went extinct due to the high volume of KIA letters sent to families) until the humans work out a way to overcome the Skeaxxians' AppliedPhlebotinum weapon with [[SuperSoldier the lobster squad]]. Cue the end of the war and the humans send probes through.......only to find nothing on the other side. Understandably, Random sees setting foot on Nixx as nightmarish, particularly when [[spoiler: Cadmium Redd resurrects the dead lobster troopers as zombies]].
* YouHaveFailedMe: [[spoiler: Warathraal berates Cadmium Redd for squandering his new demigodlike abilities on mortal conflicts. He even cites the trope name word for word.]]
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness:
** [[spoiler: Cadmium Redd's fate. Warathraal destroys him for wasting his power on revenge against Random.]]
** This is implied to be the case for the Lobster Squad as well, since the experiments performed on them are bad for PR. So, at a party celebrating their achievements, a fission heater explodes, killing everyone except Random, who was out the back having sex with a droid, [[spoiler: and Sergeant Diaz, who was watching him.]]
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