Bizarre
Bizarro is a fictional character owned by the US entertainment company Time Warner .
As an independent character, Bizarro was the title character of the comic series Tales of the Bizarro World , which appeared between the 1960s and 1980s . In addition, the character or the term Bizarro has found its way into US colloquial language and pop culture in many ways : As a word in US colloquial language , Bizarro describes an "evil twin" or a "distorted reflection" of a person, or as a compound word in In connection with other terms, the inverted version of any object, institution, idea or conception. The American television series Alles Betty! himself, for example, with a wink with the slogan The Bizarro Version of Sex and the City . In American pop culture, Bizarro served, among other things, as the namesake of a punk rock band - The Bizarros - and of a genre of underground literature, the so-called Bizarro fiction .
Publications
In addition to countless appearances as a guest star in Superman stories, Bizarro is above all the title hero of the so-called Tales of the Bizarro World , which has been published in loose succession and in changing form since 1959.
Tales of the Bizarro World appeared as a permanent feature in the series Action Comics (from US Action Comics # 264) and 1961/1962 Adventure Comics , the cover pictures of which the Bizarro character repeatedly adorned from issue # 286. In the Adventure Comics , the Bizarro stories replaced the older series Congorilla and Aquaman from issue # 285 in June 1961 . Conversely, the series itself only had a relatively short half-life: after it had been used up, the bizarro feature was published for the last time in issue # 299 of Adventure Comics , and from issue # 300 (September 1962) onwards, in turn, by Science- Fiction series Legion of Superheroes to be replaced.
In the 1990s, the Bizarro miniseries A Bizarro by Mark Bright was released, followed in the 2000s by the anthology volumes Bizarro Comics and Bizarro World , both of which brought together several offbeat stories that revolved around the bizarro theme.
Comic character Bizarro
The comic figure Bizarro was developed in 1958 by the science fiction writer Otto Binder as an inverted mirror image of the comic hero Superman. Binder first used Bizarro as a character in the comic book US Superboy # 68, which appeared in October 1958. This issue was illustrated by the draftsman George Papp , who is thus the creator of Bizarro's characteristic appearance: Papp visualized Bizarro as a man who resembled Superman in stature and appearance in an extreme way, who like the superhero wore a red, blue and yellow costume with a cape and Wore an S emblem on the chest, in which the colors were distributed in a similar way to different pieces of clothing as in the superhero's costume . Despite this striking resemblance, Bizarro looked completely different from his role model at Papp: his skin, unlike the naturally flesh-colored skin of Superman's, was depicted as a chalk-white-greyish-colored coating and, in contrast to Superman's classically beautiful hero's physiognomy, his face was depicted as angular- coarse and somewhat disfigured.
Papp's concept, with occasional variations of details, has been retained to this day in all graphic uses of Bizarro in comic strips, animated series, web cartoons, advertising posters and the like.
Critics, Superman fans, and anthropologists have often interpreted Superman's distorted reflection as a metaphor for the Soviet Union , believing that Bizarro's relationship with Superman as his born antipode was parallel to the relationship with the United States - as its symbolic embodiment of Superman in the 1950s was widely recognized - in the 1950s to the Soviet Union as their "natural antipode".
Bizarro versions
Classic
The classic bizarro is a being that was first introduced in the comic book US-Superboy # 68. There he appears as a creature created when Superboy's teenage self is hit by a duplication beam developed by scientist Professor Peterson during a test demonstration. At the end of this story, Bizarro is destroyed because its structure is unstable; its destruction releases substances that restore sight to a blind girl.
Superman's archenemy Lex Luthor later repeats Peterson's experiment by recreating the duplication beam and pointing it at the adult Superman. His hope of creating a Superman of his own, with whom he can destroy his opponent, is not confirmed, however: the anti-Superman he created instead develops his own mind and breaks away from Luthor in order to - with rather modest success - Emulate Superman and fight as a hero for the good. This bizarre character then appeared again and again in the Superman comics for more than twenty years until 1986. After Bizarro is hit by a comet, his powers - so far very similar to Superman - are turned into the opposite: while Superman has heat vision, Bizarro has cold vision, while Superman has X-ray vision, Bizarro has X-ray hearing, etc. And while Superman's greatest weakness is green Is kryptonite, Bizarro is susceptible to a substance known as blue kryptonite. In order to pull the clumsy troublemaker out of circulation, Superman later assigns him the task of protecting a deserted, cube-shaped planetoid, which is populated with further bizarro creatures (twisted copies of Superman's friends and acquaintances) created by the use of the duplication emitter . The last time this Bizarro appears in US Superman # 426 in 1986 , in which he commits suicide with the help of blue kryptonite, in order to become the perfect opposite of the living Superman through his death .
Modern
After the restart of the Superman series in 1986, Bizarro was integrated into the new series in two different, equal, side-by-side interpretations : One version of Bizarro is the product of a repeatedly repeated - and repeatedly unsuccessful - attempt by LexCorp to create a submissive clone by Superman, while the second, modern version of Bizarro is an artifact devised by the Joker as a distorted mirror image of Superman's, which was brought to life by the magic of the wizard Mr. Mxyzptlk.
A total of three stories are about attempts by Luther and his wife, the Contessa del Portenza, to clone Superman. The first story of this kind can be found in # 5 of the US miniseries Man of Steel from 1986 (author and illustrator: John Byrne ): There, on Luther's behalf, the Chinese doctor Doctor Teng creates a supposed clone of Superman's with the help of a scan of Superman's DNA. According to Luther's plan, this clone should be identical to Superman in every respect - only with the one difference that the clone should not have a will of its own, but should be devoted to Luthor to the last. After it briefly looks as if the experiment was a success, the clone collapses: its face is contorted and its skin is colored in the bizarre-typical white of earlier times. Luthor, who thinks the creature is dead, evaluates the experiment as a failure and has the "corpse" disposed of. The clone - who is still alive - awakens to new life, becomes self-employed and from then on terrorizes Metropolis with clumsy heroics . At the end of the story, the creature is destroyed in battle with Superman due to its "cellular instability".
In a five-part story from 1994 ( A Bizarro ), Luthor repeats the clone experiment that Bizarro had created in the hopes of extracting a cure for a disease from the clone's body that he, Luthor, was dealing with in the Superman stories of these Time suffers. This second Bizarro escapes from Luther's laboratory, kidnaps Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane, takes her to a department store that he has prepared as Bizarro World and tries several times to impress her with alleged heroic deeds . At the end of the said story, this Bizarro perishes, like his predecessor, from the instability of his organism. A third clone Bizarro creates Luther's wife in the comic book Superman. Forever from 1998 by hiring scientist Dabney Donovan to repeat the Bizarro experiment again. The Contessa incites this bizarro on her husband in order to get revenge for an attack on her life, lets him kidnap her own daughter and throw Metropolis into - harmless - chaos before she destroys him by remote control during his confrontation with Superman.
In US Superman # 160, a bizarre with a decidedly different background is presented: In this story, delusional ideas of the Joker - actually an enemy of Batman - are conjured up by Superman's adversary Mr. Mxyzptlk, a magician from the so-called 5th dimension Brought to reality. Unlike the clone Bizarros, this Bizarro does not die at the end of the story in which he is brought to life . Instead, he settles in a crypt in a cemetery outside of Superman's hometown, which he declares to be his base as the Graveyard of Solitude . In later stories, Bizarro competes with the mad Professor Zoom, forms a team with the Batman duplicate Batzarro , discovers his greatest weakness (yellow kryptonite) and is captured once by Lex Luthor and another time by the evil General Zod and abused as a farmer in their anti-Superman plans.
While the Lexcorp Bizarro hardly speak in the stories in question and are rather tragically serious characters, the Joker Bizarro is a lovable chaot : In addition to the linguistic and logical quirks of the original Bizarro character (always saying the opposite of what is meant, always the opposite do the logically required) and the wrong S emblem on his Superman costume, the most noticeable feature is a Bizarro No. 1 amulet made of stone as a lucky charm around his neck.
Alternatively
Over the years, various alternative variants of the Bizarro character have also been used, but mostly only appear sporadically - and not regularly: For example, a Bizarro Superboy appeared in the Superboy series of the 1990s, whose origin in the relevant one History was traced back to an attempt by the genetic research institute Cadmus.
Other Bizarro creatures include a Bizarro Supergirl created by villain Two-Face in an installment of the Supergirl series from the 1990s / early 2000s , as well as that of Brainiac 5.1. created Bizarro Legion and the backward running horse Bizarabo.
In the Elseworld story Superman: Red Son , Bizarro appears as a Luthor-created Superman clone who is juxtaposed with the “super communist” Superman, while the mini-series The Nail features a legion of bizarros who appear to be the villain of the mini-series Serving henchmen. The graphic novel The Superman Monster comes up with a version of Superman that is strongly reminiscent of Bizarro, and in the one-shot Spider-Boy , Bizarro becomes a new character called “Bizarnage” with the Marvel Comics-owned “Carnage” character “Merged.
Bizarro world
The Bizarro World (. English Bizarro World ) [also Earth-O or Htrae - read backwards Earth (English for. Earth ) - called] is the scene of most of the stories that deal with Bizarros solo adventures. According to the guiding principle of the Bizarro stories, which Superman and his world turn into the opposite wherever possible, the Bizarro world is not a round, but a cube-shaped planet. Unlike the earth, which revolves around a yellow sun, the bizarro world revolves around a blue sun . And unlike on earth, where everyone strives to work as well and perfectly as possible, in the Bizarro world the law of the so-called Bizarro Code applies, which states that "it is a crime to do something right" (" ... is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World ").
In addition to Bizarro, the Bizarro world is made up of twisted versions of the Superman supporting characters ( Bizarro-Perry White , Bizarro-Jimmy Olsen ) and villains ( Bizarro-Kltpzyxm ) as well as other comic heroes , whose adventures are the DC-Verlag, which owns the rights to Superman , relocated, inhabited. For example the anti- Batman Batzarro, or Yellow Lantern as a counterpart to the sci-fi hero Green Lantern . The linguistic usage and customs in Bizarro-Welt are also upside-down: So they say - grammatically and semantically twisted - "I am happy" when they mean "I am unhappy", or say "I hate you" to say "I love you". While on earth it is reprehensible to commit crimes, on Bizarro-Welt it is seen as a sin to go through life honestly, and while earthly banks advertise to increase the money of their customers, the banks on Bizarro-Welt extol their ability to senselessly squander their customers' money. The use of the opposite concept was, however, carried through very inconsistently: For example, grammatically correct sentences were often used, which were only intended to mean the opposite of what was said in terms of content, or grammatically distorted sentences were used that were semantically meant as they were written.
The Tales of the Bizarro World was a permanent backup feature in the Adventure Comics series from 1961 to 1962 . After that, the feature changed constantly within various Superman series, such as Superman , Superman Family or Action Comics , in which the bizarre adventures were printed in the back of the booklet.
The term Bizarro as a reference brand of American pop culture
Bizarro has found its way into American pop culture in many ways in the past. In particular, the figure-American US television series and game shows anymore was often allusive manner in different installed: So dedicated the, playing in New York City, comedy series Seinfeld the Bizarro concept a whole sequence under the title The Bizarro Jerry firmierte . The series South Park took up the bizarro theme in episode # 105 ( An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig ), in which a bizarro version of the character Stan Marsh , one of the main characters in the series, the sleepy American small town South Park Location of the series, disturbed. The makers of the comedy show Saturday Night Live , however, parodied the bizarro theme in the 1980s in a series of sketches in which they repeatedly caricatured their own home broadcaster, NBC, as The Bizarro Network .
The American satirist Al Franken used the bizarro concept in his book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations , in which he ridiculed the Republican politician Newt Gingrich as "Bizarro Newt".
Frequent references to Bizarro can also be found in satirical cartoon series such as The Simpsons or Drawn Together : While the Superman parody Captain Hero in Drawn Together refers to a train station toilet where he had a homosexual experience as Bizarro World , the supporting character refers to Comicbook Guy in the Simpsons episodes The Furious Yellow and Worst Episode Ever his surroundings, which he thought are twisted, are repeated as Bizarro World .
More innuendos on Bizarro can be found in the episode Ripple Effect of the sci-fi series Stargate - in which The Bizarro SG-1 is mentioned - and in the episode The Wish of the mystery series Buffy - The Vampire Slayer and the sequel You're Welcome to the Buffy spin-off series Angel , in which the character Cordelia Chase contemptuously describes her surroundings as Bizarro World .
In addition to the band Bizarros, which named itself after the anti-Superman, Bizarro references in American music can be found especially with the band None more Black , which dedicated the song Bizarro Me to Bizarro .
Adaptations in other media
Adaptations of the Bizarro character were used in numerous other media apart from the comics: Bizarro appeared as a character in various Superman cartoon series such as The Super Friends (US dubbing voice: Bill Calloway), The Super Powers Team (US dubbing voice: Danny Dark ), Superman: The Animated Series (US dubbing voice: Tim Daly ) and Justice League Unlimited . In the television series Smallville , which was filmed with real actors , an adaptation of Bizarro appeared in the last episode ( Phantom ) of the 6th as well as the first ( Bizarro ), ninth ( Gemini ) and tenth ( Persona ) episode of the 7th season.
Another real-life version of the character appeared - played by Dean Cain - in the series Superman - The Adventures of Lois & Clark , while another variant of the character, played by Barry Meyers , appeared in seven episodes of the Superboy series of the late 1980s and Performed in the early 1990s ( Bizarro the Thing of Steel , The Battle with Bizarro , Bride of Bizarro , To Be Human ). In all of these versions, Bizarro was a creature created by Lex Luthor or Professor Potter who was largely identical to the Bizarro of the comics in appearance, character, behavior, etc.
Computer games in which Bizarro appears are Superman 64 , Superman: Man of Steel and the adaptation of the movie Superman Returns , in which he is even a playable character.
Web links
- toonopedia about Bizarro (engl.)
Notes and individual references
- ↑ The comic researcher Don Markstein states that the 1980s was when the term bizarro entered the common parlance of the American population, to denote the weird mutated version of anything or as an increase in the term bizarre (dt. Bizarre )