Bizarro

Bizarro is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Superboy #68 (October 1958), and was created by writer Otto Binder and artist George Papp.

Bizarro and the Bizarro World have become somewhat well known in popular culture, and the term Bizarro is used as to describe anything that uses twisted logic or that is the opposite of something else. ^[1]

Publication history

The original Bizarro first appears in Superboy #68 (Oct. 1958) when Superboy is exposed to a "duplicator ray." This version makes multiple appearances in Action Comics; Superman; Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen; Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane; Adventure Comics; Secret Society of Super-Villains and DC Comics Presents from 1959 to 1984 prior to a reboot as a result of the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline. In 1986, Bizarro was reintroduced in issue #5 of the limited series, The Man of Steel. Another version appears in the 2006 "Emperor Joker" storyline that ran through Superman #160-161, Adventures of Superman #582-583, Superman: Man of Steel #104-105, Action Comics #769-770 and Superman: Emperor Joker #1.

Fictional character biography

Pre-Crisis Bizarro

The original Teen Bizarro is created during a laboratory accident. A scientist demonstrating his newly invented "duplicating ray" to Superboy, tests the device on a radium pellet and a jewel. However, the duplicated radium was non-radioactive and the jewel melted. The scientist then stumbles and knocks the machine, inadvertently creating an imperfect Superboy. Although the scientist insists the duplicate is not alive, the creature nonetheless escapes from the lab. Bizarro wants to be accepted, but his appearance and his child like erratic behavior scares people, especially since he has little control over his super-strength. He is befriended by a blind girl, shortly before Superboy realizes the glowing-blue remains of the machine would act as kryptonite to the doppelganger. During the confrontation, Bizarro flies straight towards Superboy, having realized that the shockwave from his destruction would cure the girl's blindness. Strangely, Teen-Bizarro later appears in a Legion of Super-Heroes story set in the Legion's future time.

The later Adult Bizarro is created by Lex Luthor, who re-created the "duplicating ray" and uses it on Superman hoping to use the duplicate in an attack on Superman. Bizarro does not cooperate and instead tries to emulate Superman. Unfortunately, his attempts to match his original's heroics are clumsy and destructive. Bizarro uses the Imperfect Duplication Ray on himself and creates a New Bizarro who has Superman's looks and Bizarro's mentality. New Bizarro asks for Lois Lane's hand in marriage and prevents Superman from filling Lois in on the plot that fails anyway. In a later story, Jimmy Olsen becomes a Normal-looking Bizarro with a Bizarro mentality and exposure to Blue Kryptonite resets his mentality to Jimmy normal.

Bizarro then kidnaps Lois for companionship. This dilemma is resolved when Lois uses the "Imperfect duplication ray" to create a Bizarro-Lois Lane to be a more appropriate companion for Bizarro. Feeling rejected by the people of Earth, the Bizarro couple move to Htrae, which had ancient advanced technology which they used to populate the planet with other Bizarros created in the same manner.

Post-Crisis Bizarro

LexCorp Bizarros

In Man of Steel #5, Lex Luthor creates a clone to combat the Man of Steel.^[2] The clone is proven to be imperfect, the imperfections in the duplicates eventually fatal. The mute creature makes several attempts to "be" Superman, including wearing a jacket and glasses over his still visible costume. The flawed duplicate is destroyed when he and Superman fly into each other.^[3] The powdered remains of Bizarro restore sight to Lois Lane's blind sister.

Luthor later recreates Bizarro to offer insight into how to stop the "Clone Plague". The new Bizarro escapes, and kidnaps Lois Lane, taking her to "Bizarro World"; a warehouse set up like a surreal version of Metropolis. He subjects her to danger, so she manages to escape, and Bizarro is recaptured by Lexcorp, where he subsequently dies.

Emperor Joker

A later version of Bizarro is created by the Joker by the use of the powers of Mr. Mxyzptlk^[4]. The Joker creates a twisted version of Earth, a perfect cube with Joker's image on each facet. Created to be the greatest hero of Jokerworld and leader of that world's JLA (Joker's League of Anarchy), the backwards talking Bizarro is one of a number of characters Mxyzptlk saves from that world after Joker loses the stolen powers. The creature is subsequently captured by the Pokolistanian dictator General Zod, and tortured, apparently just for the pleasure of beating someone who resembles Superman.

After escaping from Pokolistan with Superman's help, Bizarro recreates his Jokerworld headquarters, the Graveyard of Solitude, and at erratic intervals emerges to "help" or hinder Superman; the decision as to which being seemingly random, and the same amount of trouble caused either way.

Bizarro is invited to join the Secret Society of Supervillains. Bizarro challenges Zoom to a race, due to Bizarro's complicated speech patterns, neither Zoom nor Cheetah are sure which end result of the race would convince Bizarro to join. The two race across the planet, Bizarro's erratic zig-zag path a point of contention with Zoom. When Zoom insults and threatens Bizarro, he is convinced that Zoom is his friend and joins. While with the Society, Bizarro kills the Human Bomb, commenting that he likes the flashes of light that the Bomb's powers produce.^[3]

One Year Later

One year later, Bizarro is a captive of Lex Luthor and has been watching television in a small room for thirteen months. As a result, he is better informed than before.

Afterwards Bizarro left Earth to create a home for himself. After creating a cube shaped planet, filled with abstract versions of various buildings and locations on Earth, Bizarro found himself still lonely. Bizarro finds that, under the power of a blue sun, he gained a new ability called "Bizarro Vision". He uses his new ability to populate the planet with Bizarros, starting with a Bizarro Lois, that feared and hated him. Attempting to find answers Bizarro abducts Pa Kent and Superman follows in pursuit. With Superman's help, he becomes the new Bizarro World's greatest hero.^[3]

Powers and abilities

Main article: Powers and abilities of Superman

Bizarro has similar powers to Superman, which include superhuman strength, speed, durability and flight. The Pre-Crisis Bizarro's abilities were the same as Superman's until he was hit by a meteorite which reversed his powers: such as freeze vision (as opposed to heat vision); flame breath (as opposed to frost breath); X-ray vision that can only see through lead; microscopic vision that decreases the size of objects; "x-ray hearing" and "spotlight vision". ^[5] Under the light of a blue sun, Bizarro also gains amplified powers and "Bizarro vision", which creates a Bizarro duplicate of the target. ^[6]

Bizarro is weakened by blue kryptonite, which affects him in the same manner as green kryptonite affects Superman. Yellow sunlight has also been shown to weaken Bizarro.

Alternate versions of Bizarro

• Pre-Crisis Bizarro - In Grant Morrison's Animal Man storyline "Deus Ex Machina", Psycho-Pirate, while in Arkham Asylum, recreated characters removed from continuity. This version of Bizarro was one of them. Bizarro appears as he originally did. Presumably, this character vanished from existence when the Psycho-Pirate's episode of madness ended, along with his colleagues.

• Batzarro - A Bizarro version of Batman debuted in World's Finest Comics #156. Jeph Loeb introduced a Bizarro-Batman, Batzarro, into the DC universe in Superman/Batman #20 (June 2005).

• Bizarro Justice League - featured in Action Comics Escape from Bizarro World storyline, Bizarro members included: Bizarro Batman, wearing a smiley-face on his chest, and possessing a bat-treehouse; Bizarro Hawkgirl, who screeches like an actual hawk; Bizarro Wonder Woman, who ties herself up with her lasso to make others lie; Yellow Lantern, a reluctant member of the Sinestro Corps; and Bizarro Flash, a greatly overweight Bizarro, who collapses after a few seconds of running. Other Bizarro versions featured in the storyline were a Bizarro Lex Luthor, Doomsday, Joker, and Brainiac.

• Match - a clone of Kon-El, the character was reintroduce by Geoff Johns as a deteriorated clone resembling Bizarro in both appearance and speech.

• A. Bizarro - a Bizarro duplicate of an ordinary man who happened to look like Superman., the character was introduced in the self-titled miniseries by Steve Gerber and M.D. Bright.

• Project Cadmus - created a cloning process for Lex Luthor in their attempts to clone Superman. This led to Bizarro clones of: Superboy; Harley Quinn; Supergirl; and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

• Lord Havok and the Extremists - a Bizarro version of Wonder Woman, called Wonderzarro, is shown to be a member of Monarch's army. ^[7]

Alternate universe depictions

• Superman: Red Son - Lex Luthor creates a imperfect clone of Superman, as a champion for the United States. The creature sacrifices himself to save London from a nuclear missile, saying "Hello, everybody. Me very pleased to meet you," seconds before his death. He has red hair and lumpy blister-like skin, and his costume resembles that of the original Superman except that the monogram on his chest reads "US".

• The Superman Monster - in the Frankenstein pastiche, Viktor Luthor's Creature originally resembles Bizarro, although he sloughs off the chalky skin later in the story.

• JLA: The Nail - Lex Luthor discovered Kal-El's abandoned spaceship and taken DNA samples from it in creating clones; the Justice League encounters these Bizarro-like duplicates used as Luthor's henchmen.

• All-Star Superman - Bizarro clones are the workforce used by P.R.O.J.E.C.T. under Leo Quintum. They reside in a universe with tremendous gravity called the Underverse, and they speak like the regular DC Universe Bizarro. Superman turns into an evil Bizarro-like being under the influence of black kryptonite, which is drawn from the Underverse. ^[8] The Bizarros are a form of infection that the planet spreads to Earth; they are immune to the Underverse's harsh environment and can survive in space. At first, the Bizarros appear as emaciated, gray humanoids with hollow eye sockets and pale, lumpy skin, but when they touch a person, that person becomes a version of a Bizarro. One Bizarro grabs Superman, and it takes on the appearance of the regular Bizarro.

• Zibarro from All-Star Superman. On Bizarro World, only one out of billions has the mental abilities of a normal human being. This Bizarro introduces himself to Superman as Zibarro. Although Zibarro resembles Superman, he has no apparent powers. He helps Superman to escape from Bizarro world, unselfishly giving up his own chance to do so. However, Superman promises to return to rescue him.

• Justice League Adventures - An entire team of Bizarros is introduced in the Justice League Adventures comic book, including one based on the all-new character All-Star.

In other media

Television

• Bizarro appears in the Challenge of the SuperFriends, voiced by Bill Calloway.

• Bizarro appears in The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, voiced by Danny Dark.

• Bizarro appears in Superman: The Animated Series, voiced by Tim Daly, and its successor Justice League Unlimited, voiced by George Newbern

• Bizarro appears in the Superboy series, played by Barry Meyers. He is to date the only live-action appearance of the traditional version of the character, complete with angular white features.

• A clone of Superman analogous to Bizarro appears in Lois & Clark played by Dean Cain. Created by Lex Luthor for the purpose or replacing Superman, he does not have Bizarro's distinct appearance, and is visually indistinguishable from Superman, as well as possessing all his normal powers and weaknesses. Although he does not speak backwards he does appear childlike and slightly simple-minded, and Lois refers to him at one point as seeming "bizarre".

• A villain nicknamed Bizarro appears in Smallville, played by Tom Welling. However, this version departs significantly from classic versions of the character, being neither unintelligent nor "backwards", and appearing most of the time as a perfect duplicate of Clark Kent that managed to avoid suspicion from even Clark's close friends for over a month. The "Bizarro" aspect of the character was actually only a vessel for a malignant phantom that had escaped from the Phantom Zone and instantaneously generated a kryptonian body for himself from a few of Kent's cells. In this host body the phantom possessed identical powers to Kent, including the additional ability to fly (despite that Clark has not mastered this ability, yet), thus qualifying in those respects as a clone. However, his cloned body differed in its vulnerabilities as it was powered up by green kryptonite while blue kryptionite supercharged him to the point of self-destruction. In a further indication of his "opposite" nature to Kent, Bizarro's skin distorts into a crystalline substance when exposed to yellow sunlight (an effect that was achieved through the use of super-imposed computer animation) which simultaneously reveals his fraudulent nature and references Bizarro's classic appearance.

• The Bizarro world was the focus of the Seinfeld episode "The Bizarro Jerry". Also, a Bizarro model can be seen in the background of an apartment.

• An episode of Space Ghost Coast To Coast featured a Bizarro form of Santa Claus, which was a large flesh-coloured tentacled blob with two faces under a Santa hat. He was an enemy of the Tooth Fairy. He wanted to take the teeth of children to make evil twisted toys for his own amusement. In the episode, he battled the Tooth Fairy in Space Ghost's set.

• An episode of Sealab 2021 featured Bizarro forms of the cast, who invaded Sealab to take a Death Ray and jewelry they didn't have.

Video games

• Bizarro appears in Superman 64.

• Bizarro appears in Superman: The Man of Steel.

• Bizarro is a villain and playable character in the Superman Returns video game.

• Bizarro is set to appear in the upcoming video game DC Universe Online.

Film

• In Superman III a Bizarro-like villain appears when synthetic kryptonite causes Superman to split into a heroic Clark Kent and an Evil Superman, although the character shares more characteristics with Ultraman.

• In Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, a similar idea to Bizarro is used when Luthor attempts to clone Superman. Although the final product, Nuclear Man has different abilities and looks nothing like Superman, a deleted scene involves an intermediate stage in the character's creation which produces a creature closer in concept to Bizarro, with white skin, low intelligence and unusual speech.

Notes

See also

• A. Bizarro (exact relation unknown)
• List of Superman enemies

External links

• Don Markstein's Toonpedia: Bizarro
• Supermanica: Bizarro Supermanica entry on the Pre-Crisis Bizarro
• Supermanica: Bizarro-Superboy Supermanica entry on the original Pre-Crisis character.
• Bizarro Mailbag (superdickery.com), a satirical feature illustrating Bizarro's unique speech patterns
• [1] Smallvile wiki's article about Bizarro