- Siegel, Jerry and John Forte.
Tales of the Bizarro World.
New York: DC Comics, [1961, 1962] 2000.
ISBN 1-56389-624-9.
-
In 1961, the almost Euclidean logic of the Superman comics went around
a weird bend in reality, foretelling other events to transpire in that
decade. Superman fans found their familar axioms of super powers and
kryptonite dissolving into pulsating phosphorescent Jello on the
Bizarro World, populated by imperfect and uniformly stupid replicas of
Superman, Lois Lane, and other denizens of Metropolis created by a
defective duplicator ray. Everything is backwards, or upside-down, or
inside-out on the Bizarro World, which itself is cubical, not
spherical.
These stories ran in Adventure Comics in 1961 and
1962 and then disappeared into legend, remaining out of print for
more than 35 years until this compilation was published. Not only
are all of the Bizarro stories here, there are profiles of the
people who created Bizarro, and even an interview with Bizarro
himself.
I fondly remember the Bizarro stories from the odd comic books I came
across in my youth, and looked forward to revisiting them, but I have
to say that what seemed exquisitely clever in small doses to a twelve
year old may seem a bit strained and tedious in a 190 page collection
read by somebody, er…a tad more mature. Still, ya
gotta chuckle at Bizarro starting a campfire (p. 170) by rubbing two
boy scouts together—imagine the innuendos which would be read
into that today!
November 2007 