Thursday, July 1, 2010

Tales of the Bizarro World!


It all started with the "Bizarro Code"... Us do opposites of all earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is a big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World! So was the beginning of one of the wackiest characters to grace the comics, the original "Idiot of Steel". Created by writer Alvin Schwartz and artist Curt Swan for the Superman newspaper strip in the late 1950s, its publication was delayed, so Bizarro eventually made his first appearance in Superboy #68 by creators Otto Binder and George Papp. This "first" Bizarro was created as an "imperfect duplicate" of Superboy by a machine invented by a Dr. Dalton that unfortunately immediately exploded. This replica fought Superboy for a few issues before "disintegrating into the lifeless molecules from which it was formed."


But most readers fondly remember the adult Bizarro Superman that appeared in Action Comics #244-245 written by Otto Binder with Al Plastino doing the art chores. This time, Lex Luthor creates another duplication machine that he turns on the "Man of Steel", as well as making him a Bizarro Lois to be his bride. At the end of the storyline, the Bizarro's leave earth to find happiness on a new planet, where they create more duplicates of themselves and others in the Superman Family on their strange cube-shaped world. Bizarro, who was never a true villain, but more a lovable nuisance, made other "guest" appearance in the Superman features before being awarded his own back-up stories, starting with Adventure Comics #285, June 1961. The Tales of the Bizarro World ran for fifteen wacky episodes over the next two years, producing some of the craziest stories to ever hit the comics, played strictly for laughs!

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