Subject: Bizarro

Culture: American pop culture

Setting: DC Comics

Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)

* Wallace 2014 p20

"Many villains follow a mirror-image theme to contrast them with their heroic counterparts, but few of them are as surreal as Bizarro. This reflection is a funhouse distortion with more than a few cracks marring its surface.

"Bizarro is able to match Superman in raw power, but his special abilities are reversed: freeze vision, flame breath, and X-ray vision that only lets him see through lead. He is strengthened by green kryptonite, but blue kryptonite will kill him."

* Misiroglu/Eury eds. 2006 p35

"The history of Bizarro, the defective replica of Superman, is as craggy as the creature's disfigured face. While the layperson or contemporary fan might regard Bizarro as the doppelganger of the Man of Steel, this tragic character first appeared in 'the adventures of Superman when he was a boy,' DC Comics' Superboy #68 (1958), written by Otto Binder and illustrated by George Papp."

Costume