Post by Hoosier X on Jan 17, 2015 17:50:37 GMT -5
Tales of the Bizarro World
Let me admit this upfront … I love the Bizarro World! What a bunch of crazy nuts those Bizarros are! They sleep with their feet on their pillows! Postmen bark at dogs! On Bizarro-Easter, the rabbits don’t hide the eggs … the Bizarro-kids do! And the rabbits search for them!
They have a code all citizens must live by:
Us do opposite of all Earthly things!
Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness!
Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!
The original Bizarro-Superman used a duplicator ray on himself to create all the other Bizarro males.The same ray was used on Lois Lane to create all the women. So, except for a few oddities like Bizarro-Jimmy Olsen and Bizarro-Lana Lang created for some of the later stories, all the men look like Bizarro-Superman and all the women look like Bizarro-Lois Lane.
For fifteen glorious months in 1961 and 1962, those crazy chalk-faced ding-dongs had their own backup series in Adventure Comics, from #285 to #299. It was called “Tales of the Bizarro World” and it was a glorious highlight of the Silver Age.
Every time you start reading one of these INSANE stories, you can count on 11 or 12 pages of inspired goofiness as the Bizarros struggle with the simplest concepts in their grudge match with normal behavior.
Like the time the Bizarro World started experiencing weird rumbling noises. What does it mean? The Bizarro leader is worried that Bizarro-Earth is going to explode, just like Krypton! While he worries about building a spaceship to save his Bizarro-son, it turns out the actual menace is … weird puffy blue people who are made out of BLUE KRYPTONITE!
This is very bad for the Bizarros because blue kryptonite is fatal to Bizarros! And now they’ve been invaded by strange little beings made out of the deadly substance!
The Bizarros leap into action … and start celebrating! It just happens to be July 4 on Bizarro-Earth, so they all decide to celebrate their usual July 4 holiday – Christmas! – and the invasion at the same time. Bizarro No. 1 dresses up as Santa and destroys every chimney he goes down as he puts broken toys under Christmas cactuses. And they pass out Christmas cards with little poems like this:
At this time uv year
When all hopes burne brite
Me think uv yur face
And scream all nite!
UNMERRY CHRISTMAS!
The Bizarro Mayor finally realizes that if everyone is killed by the blue kryptonite people then he won’t be mayor of anything, so he orders the Bizarros to attack the invaders. As they fly to their doom, a group of Bizarro-Lois Lanes dress up as cheerleaders … to cheer on the blue kryptonite invaders!
Rackety Zackety!
Let’s give a cheer!
Nice-nice invaders!
Us glad you am here!
YAA-AAA, Monsters!!!
The body count gets pretty high. There are dead Bizarros all over the place! But all is not lost! They have a few more ideas up their sleeves!
Someone realizes that the Bizarro-Lois Lanes are unharmed by the blue kryptonite, so they start throwing Bizarro-Loises at the invaders! That also doesn’t work.
Then someone comes up with another idea! What if they wear lead suits to block out the deadly blue kryptonite rays! It works for Superman when he needs to block out green kryptonite rays!
It’s actually a pretty good plan for a Bizarro, but it doesn’t work! The Bizarro soldiers are still dropping like flies! So they retreat to Knucklehead Hill to regroup.
The way they get out of this deadly dilemma is clever and very much in line with the way the Bizarro World works. I won’t give it away except to say that Bizarro-Jimmy Olsen and the Bizarro-children save the day!
In addition to this Bizarro classic, the series also feature Bizarro No. 1 creating a scary monster (an Adonis-like figure with movie-star looks), Bizarro-Jimmy on trial for murder but happy that he has the world’s worst lawyer and will almost certainly be found guilty, and Bizarro Lois Lane vs. Bizarro-Titano!
One of the best things about the Bizarro series is this: They were all written by Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman! It’s a great opportunity to see how truly talented he was. He came up with 15 months’ worth of inventive and often hilarious stories with a premise that could have gotten pretty stale pretty quickly.
And the art is by John Forte, an artist who just doesn’t get nearly enough credit. When the Bizarros made their graceful exit from Adventure Comics, Forte stuck around and drew the replacement strip, the Legion of Super-Heroes, for several years.
All 15 stories from the Tales of the Bizarro World series were collected in a trade paperback in 2000, so you really have no excuse to deprive yourself of this Silver Age treasure any longer.
