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Quote1 Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World! Quote2
Bizarro src

Bizarro is a defective duplicate of Superman. He is the polar opposite: good is bad, yes is no and ugly is beautiful. After bothering Superman for a time, he was made protector of Htrae, the Bizarro World.

Criminal mastermind Lex Luthor once acquired the designs for a Duplicator Ray, first envisioned and built by a scientist named Professor Dalton. Modifying the device, Luthor intended on using it to create a super-strong clone of his nemesis, Superman: a mindless slave who would obey Luthor's every command. However, the duplication process resulted in the creation of an imperfect duplicate of Superman, just as it had many years ago when used to create a "Bizarro Superboy". This artificial being came to be known as "Bizarro #1," or simply Bizarro, and, ultimately unfit for Luthor's purposes because of its limited intelligence and unpredictable nature, kidnapped Lois Lane and absconded with her to an island to alleviate his own loneliness. Disappointed by Lois's terror and revulsion, Bizarro trained the Duplicator Ray on himself to create a "New Bizarro" with Superman's features, but New Bizarro quickly turned on its creator to claim Lois for himself. Superman helped Bizarro destroy New Bizarro and used the Duplicator Ray to create a suitable partner for Bizarro: Bizarro Lois Lane. Bizarro accepted Bizarro Lois, and both left Earth to settle on another world out in the reaches of space.[2][3]

Bizarro and Bizarro Lois found a new world to call their own and populated it with duplicates of themselves. In order to distinguish themselves from their ironically perfect duplicates, Bizarro and Bizarro Lois elected to wear necklaces bearing stone engravings announcing them as "Bizarro #1" and "Bizarro Lois #1." As the ruler of the planet, even as he masqueraded as reporter Bizarro Clark Kent, Bizarro acted as the lawgiver of his people, promulgating the only rules that Bizarros were to live by in the Bizarro Code. On one occasion, Superman was accused of trying to make Bizarro World "more perfect," a capital offense to Bizarro #1 and his disordered mind. In order to receive a pardon for his "crime," Superman agreed to terraform Bizarro World into a cube-shape, thereby making it even "more perfectly" imperfect.[4][5] Although he regarded Bizarro mainly as a mischievous idiot with super-powers, and rightfully so, Superman realized that within Bizarro was contained as much sheer power as that within him, combined with a lack of susceptibility to Kryptonite radiation. Bizarro nearly went to war with Earth when his child with Bizarro Lois went missing on the planet. To hold Bizarro off in a disastrous conflict, Superman synthesized a weakness for Bizarro artificially, using the Duplicator Ray to imperfectly replicate Green Kryptonite into Blue Kryptonite. Fortunately, Superman and Supergirl realized what Bizarro's goals were and helped him recover his infant son.[6]

Some time later, Bizarro created a Bizarro Batman, based on the image of the Earth hero Batman, to team up with just as the real Batman and Superman did regularly on Earth. Together, the team of Bizarro and Bizarro Batman made it their mission to make Earth match the standard of imperfection on Bizarro World, creating chaos with the Joker along the way. However, when they learned that Batman and Superman were creating order and perfection on Bizarro World in turn, the odd creatures returned and banned the "vandals" from their world, promising to remain there in order to prevent them from interfering in the matters of their misshapen world again.[7] It was around this time that Bizarro sought to introduce variety to his world by using the Duplicator Ray to create imperfect duplicates of all of Superman's friends, allies, and enemies and letting them romp under his supervision and for his entertainment.

After a long period of complacent absence from Superman's life, Bizarro was mislead by a mirage into erroneously believing that Bizarro World had been destroyed, causing Bizarro to blame Superman and lash out at him on Earth. Bizarro was briefly manipulated by the Toyman into serving him for a short while, but Superman pacified Bizarro by showing him that Htrae was still intact. It was during this time-period that Bizarro's set of powers was altered by a collision with some space debris, which reversed Bizarro's abilities (e.g. ice vision instead of heat vision; flame breath instead of freeze breath; X-ray vision that can only penetrate lead; etc.).[8][9] Bizarro would become involved in more misadventures over the years, in which he would variously act as friend[10][11] or foe[12][13] to the Man of Steel.

The final fate of the Bizarro World would prove to be a fittingly anticlimactic one. Irritated by the cube-shaped planet's existence, Aethyr, the demonic living intelligence of the Phantom Zone, caused it to abruptly explode in a manner similar to Krypton's demise. In backwards imitation of Superman's father Jor-El (or more accurately in deliberately flawless imitation of Bizarro Jor-El, who never even existed), Bizarro and Bizarro Lois Lane ensured that there would be no Last Son of Htrae by shoving Bizarro, Jr., into a rocket within the Fourtriss uv Bizarro and launching it directly into Bizarro World's molten core so that he would die first. With that, Bizarro and every other member of his people eagerly awaited obliteration with cries of unrestrained joy. Strangely enough, of all Bizarros, Bizarro #1 was the last to die, as his still-animate head was blasted across the galaxy by the force of Bizarro World's destruction and crashed directly in front of Clark Kent and Lana Lang in the WGBS building before finally expiring.[14]

Powers

Original powers

Originally, Bizarro's powers were almost identical to those of Superman.

  • Bizarro Physiology: Bizarro's skin is a multi-faceted crystalline compound that slightly resembles crumbled chalk. Notably, although, he doesn't seem be affected by sun conditions.
  • Superhuman Strength
  • Superhuman Speed
  • Invulnerability: Atomic bombs could not harm him.[2]
    • Self-Sustenance: Every Bizarro, even the non-superpowered do not need to eat or sleep and don't require oxygen to breathe, enabling them to travel in space and underwater unprotected.
    • Superhuman Stamina
  • Flight
  • Superhuman Hearing
  • Enhanced Senses
  • Super-Breath
  • Heat Vision
  • Super Vision: Bizarro also possessed telescopic vision, enabling him to see objects from great distances away, and X-ray vision, which enabled him to see through objects via the optical projection of X-rays.
    • Telescopic Vision: The ability to focus his vision to see something at a great distance, without violating the laws of physics.
    • Microscopic Vision: The ability to see extremely small objects and images down to the sub-atomic level.
    • X-Ray Vision: The ability to see through anything except lead.
  • Total Recall: He can remember his other life as Bizarro Superboy.[2]

Later powers

After being affected by a strange meteor[15], the powers of Bizarro changed a little:

Weaknesses

  • Vulnerability to Blue Kryptonite: All Bizarros are susceptible to the effects of Blue Kryptonite. An imperfect duplicate of Green Kryptonite, Blue Kryptonite robs a Bizarro of its superhuman talents. Prolonged exposure to Blue Kryptonite will ultimately prove fatal to a Bizarro.
  • Mental Disorder: Just like other Bizarros, he does things in reverted mode and has a twisted sense of beauty.


  • This version of Bizarro, including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths event and later restored following the rebirth of the infinite Multiverse during the Dark Crisis of 2022-2023. Even though other versions of the character may have appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.
  • Although Bizarro No. 1 is the most famous of all related characters, he is not in fact the first Bizarro. In November of 1958, writer Otto Binder introduced a Bizarro character who functioned as an imperfect duplicate of the Earth-One Superboy. That creature was the product of a scientist named Professor Dalton and was destroyed after making only one appearance.
  • In Grant Morrison's Animal Man "Deus Ex Machina" storyline, Psycho-Pirate, while in Arkham Asylum, recreated characters removed from continuity, exposing the fourth wall to the protagonist. This version of Bizarro was one of them. Bizarro appears as he originally did in Pre-Crisis Superman comics. He obviously disappears when everything returned to normal.
  • Bizarro's physical statistics are based upon that of the Earth-One Superman.
  • Although a Bizarro No. 1 died in Superman #423, this tale is regarded as an imaginary story and does not take place within established Earth-One continuity. This Bizarro seemingly died in DC Comics Presents #97 when his planet exploded.

Related

Footnotes


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