You -- you came back from the dead. Tell me -- is there... is there life after death? 
- — Doctor Drey
Lobo (Volume 2) #27 is an issue of the series Lobo (Volume 2) with a cover date of May, 1996.
Synopsis for "One Night at the Morgue"
Night envelopes the Gothic stone buildings in The City With No Name. Only the headlights of an ambulance bike pierce the darkness, approaching the haunting glow of the morgue windows where Doctor Einstein Dolittle Drey has pondered the existence of life after death for thirty years. The driver greets the Doc as he enters, a gurney trailing behind. Dr. Drey examines the unfortunate corpse of David Weener, whose cause of death is apparent; his legs have been ripped off and forced into two separate orifices during a bar altercation. The medic opens Drey's private drawer, inquiring how his experiment is proceeding. Drey admires his reconstructed creation and reveals it will be completed tonight; the mysteries of the afterlife will soon be unveiled. The medic's pager starts beeping, alerting him to his next job and he leaves.
Dr. Drey eagerly removes the foot inserted into Weener's mouth to complete his life's work, when he hears an unfamiliar voice behind him. An abnormal blue cloud manifests into a rugged gunslinger who opens fire on the corpse lying on the slab without hesitation. Terrified, Drey explains he wasn't really stealing the foot, but the gun toting stranger ignores him and checks the clock, exclaiming he's early. The surly man shoves a gun in the doctor's face, introducing himself as Billy Kronos, timecop. He warns him not to mention a word of this to anyone before vanishing just as abruptly as he appeared.
The Doctor's confusion is forgotten as the medic returns with five fresh corpses, the Grim brothers, who tried to avenge their friend Weener unsuccessfully. Drey logs them into his book, evisceration as cause of death. The medic notices the previous body now riddled with bullet holes. The doctor, stitching the foot onto his pastiche of a man, tells him not to ask as he has been sworn to secrecy. The medic is urgently paged once more and excuses himself.
Without warning, Billy Kronos reappears alongside a time duplicate who simultaneously blast the pile of corpses on the examination table. The doppelgänger conducts the same routine as his former self, while the original explains his time-belt has been acting up, causing a temporal loop. He/they are hoping to ambush a certain bounty hunter who's due to arrive at midnight. They vanish in front of the Doctor's eyes once more.
The medic struggles to haul a cart piled high with the deceased through the door. He relates how the drunken bounty hunter, "Loco," picked a fight with the entire bar, along with Sheriff Butte. Uninterested in the mountain of victims, the Doctor returns to his side project, clamping electrodes onto the lifeless being's ears, as the the medic departs on a hunch that he'll be needed elsewhere.
Dr. Drey is torn from his work once again when more multiplying maniacs manifest and shower the tower of corpses with bullets. The four time travelling idiots bicker amongst themselves until one checks the page he tore from Drey's log book against the other, confirming the time line is still intact. Satisfied, they all warp themselves away to return later.
Frustrated with all the disruptions, the doctor observes the medic wheel in the cause of all the chaos at the stroke of midnight. He peers into the clean hole through Lobo's temple where the madman shot himself. The doc records the suicide in his log, as the medic convinces him to finally conduct his experiment. Pulling the switch, the electricity reanimates the patchwork person to Drey's delight, as he urges the resurrected revenant to reveal the universal secrets of the beyond. Before the creature can answer its creator, a firing squad of eight anomalies spray the morgue indiscriminately, slaying the monster and the medic while wounding Dr. Drey.
The crowd of identical individuals check the time and their time-belts just as Lobo announces himself, rising up from the slab, and laying waste to the would be assassins. Emptying his machine guns, Lobo finishes off the last man crawling for his time-belt with a grenade. Dr. Drey, slumped against the wall, witnesses the man he confirmed dead walking around whole again. His astounded exclamation incites 'Bo to explain his healing powers... and agreement with God. The Main Man also divulges that William Kronos, or "Billy the Time-Kid," is a wanted man with a million credit bounty on his head. Lobo killed himself to lure Billy out. With his final breath, The doctor takes the opportunity to ask Lobo if there really is life after death, passing away before a response. Lobo downs a bottle of formaldehyde and lobs it at the dead doctor's head saying, "You tell me, Doc." Loading up his bounties onto the ambulance bike, he calculates that dropping off each Billy at a different bounty office will net him eight million credits.
Appearing in "One Night at the Morgue"
Featured Characters:
- Lobo (Dies; resurrected)
Supporting Characters:
- Doctor Einstein Dolittle Drey (Single appearance; dies)
- Medic Driver (Single appearance; unnamed; dies)
Antagonists:
- William Kronos aka Billy the Time-Kid (Single appearance; dies)
- Time Duplicates x7 (All die)
Other Characters:
- Dr. Drey's Creation (Single appearance; dies)
- David Weener (Appears only as a corpse)
- The Brothers Grim
- Jim Grim (Appears only as a corpse)
- Kim Grim (Appears only as a corpse)
- Bim Grim (Appears only as a corpse)
- Slim Grim (Appears only as a corpse)
- Ed Grim (Appears only as a corpse)
- Joe Blow (Appears only as a corpse)
- John Doe (Appears only as a corpse)
- Sidney Vicious (Appears only as a corpse)
- Jake Skorpio (Appears only as a corpse)
- Sheriff Butte (Appears only as a corpse)
- God (Mentioned only)
Locations:
Concepts
Items:
- Time-Belt
Vehicles:
- Ambulance Bike
Trivia
- The doctor's name is an amalgam of Albert Einstein, John Dolittle and Dr. Dre, as well as alluding to Victor Frankenstein.
- The morgue clock is framed by the Grim Reaper with "tempus fugit" inscribed on the bottom.
See Also