What Kids Don't Know: Bizarro, Part II

As we were discussing in our previous post, Bizarro's change in personality and powers when he returned in Superman #306 are examples of the Bronze Age grim-ification of the DCU.

Silver Age Bizarro was just a wacky misfit, as the in-story recap relates:

Glorifying the flawed... the misshapen... the perverse! This was... Wizard World.

But the Bronze Age story makes it very clear that "Bizarro has changed; he wasn't a threat before but now he is." Note that in the panel below, Superman implies that he used to be superior, power-wise, to Bizarro (who was, after all, "imperfect"), but now Bizarro is his equal or superior.

And this must be true, because Superman is nearly infallible, you know.

This is also the point at which Bizarro's heat vision and freeze breath got "reversed", surprising him and Superman both.

Notice anything about Bizarro's speech patterns, kids? They aren't "opposite". Bizarro says exactly what he means (albeit "imperfectly"). Only later, during the Post-Crisis Iron Age, did writers hamper Bizarro with the annoying affectation of "opposite speech", which does nothing but confuse the reader. If anything, it makes Bizarro seems smarter than us, since he understands what he's saying and we don't. DC; please start that; me am love brilliant Bizarro opposite speech.

Anyway, Bizarro was suddenly stronger, stupider, and a lot more emotionally volatile.

And, therefore, a lot easier to start using as an actual villain:

This story was published in 1976.

Bizarro joined the Secret Society of Super-Villains in 1977

and the Legion of Doom in 1978.

So Superman decides to get the bottom of this mystery, and find out why Bizarro thinks his world is gone and what changed his powers. Which I'm sure Superman will, because Superman is nearly infallible.

While the Bronze Age may have changed from the Silver Age in tone, in other aspects it was nearly indistinguishable. For example, in its reliance on utterly stupid hand-waving plot devices. Like... cosmic clouds.

Yes, I am confused; and don't call me "Patience".

Well... that explains EVERYTHING! At least, it does if you're Superman. Who's nearly infallible, you know.

Turns out Bizarro flew through a "cosmic cloud", which changed his powers, caused a mirage that made it seem as if Bizarroworld had been destroyed, and altered Barak Obama's birth certificate to read "Born in the U.S.A.". It's just amazing what cosmic clouds can do; just ask Reed Richards.


Oh, and another thing didn't change from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age. Superman was still a total... oh, what's the word I'm looking for?

"Great Rao, if I'd know it was that easy to get rid of her,

I'd have given this bozo his own room at the Fortress."

Jeez, Clark; that's TMI about your love life with Lois.

When aren't I glad to see you? Try "1:05:31P.M.", you dick.

I was right, as usual. Because I'm nearly *sigh* infallible.

And yet, my face (pictured at right) is STILL not on the quarter.

Anyway, you'll remember that all this hullabaloo started with a big fight involving the Toyman at the Metropolis Coliseum. Now, I'm sure you think of the Toyman as another innocent hold-over from Superman's Golden & Silver Ages; you're probably thinking, "Wasn't his murder of Cat Grant's son (Superman #84, 1993) the first time he ever even killed anyone?"

No. No, it wasn't.

In this very story Toyman kills a host of guards and policemen as part of the battle at the Coliseum.

"Poor Winslow! Being alive, unlike all his victims, whose surviving friends and families I'm not thinking about at all! Why? Because I'm just too focused on all the ... the ingratitude of it all. Ingratitude toward ME. What's WRONG with you people?!"

What Kids Don't Know: Bizarro's Powers

Every modern DC reader knows how Bizarro works; he's a dangerous anti-Superman with some reversed powers, like freeze-vision and heat breath.

But What Kids Don't Know is that that wasn't always the case; and that the change was specific and intentional. For that, we'll have to take a look at Superman #306.

For Rao's sake, Lo-Lo; invest in a pantsuit.

It's easy to see why writers want to use Bizarro as a villain. First and foremost, they can have no qualms about portraying him as Superman's equal, who can fight him to a standstill. Besides, he's a colorful and unpredictable character, engaging for the readers and challenging for Superman (qualities that Superman foes do not always have in abundance).

But before Superman 306, Bizarro was more an annoyance than a villian. He was that Big Dumb Dog who doesn't know his own strength and knocks stuff over (like, say, your guests) at a party. The main threat wasn't that he would fly around killing people; it was that he would expose Clark Kent's secret identity or become, um, too chummy with Lois, let's say.

Once he had a whole planet of his own (Bizarro World, or "Htrae") to muck about on, Bizarro became mostly comic relief or even (in desperate straights) an ally Superman could call on. Because being the most powerful super- being on Earth and having a bunch of super-powered robot duplicates, a supercousin, an entire city full of microscopic superallies, and a dog that can bite through steel is not always enough, you know.

Bizarro's original schtick was that he was "imperfect", and "imperfect duplicate" of Superman. He wasn't "the opposite" of Superman, just a badly defective version. His grammar was fractured, his features craggy and white, his intellect impaired. Defective ... not opposite. His powers were the same as Superman's and his costume was the same as Superman's (no, his chest logo was NOT reversed).

Bizarro the Well-Intentioned Buffoon, however, got played out and pretty much disappeared after 1965. But the seeds of what would become of him later were sown in the first line of the 'constitution' of Htrae: the Bizarro Code. "Us do opposite of all earthly things!" This became the basis for Bizarro becoming less an "imperfect Superman" and more an "anti-Superman", who could believably be a part of the comics' Secret Society of Supervillians and television's Legion of Doom (both of which happened in the Bronze Age).

What Kids Today Don't Know is that the move to make the DCU a little less goofier and a little more threatening isn't something that happened suddenly or magically with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Marvel ex-patriate Marv Wolfman did not invent tragedy, folks; the Greeks did.

Darkening the DCU in fact was one of the major thrusts of the Bronze Age. Oh, it may not seem like it to a fan of the Golden Age, where corpses lay at the entrance to every alley. And it may not seem like it to a reader in the modern era, where severed heads fly around like it's the Pantha Family Picnic. But don't be one of those ignorati who lump the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages together as one big happy innocent "Pre-Crisis" romp; the shift in tone between the Silver Age and the Bronze Age was HUGE.

In the Bronze Age, goofy sidekick Snapper Carr betrayed the Justice League to the Joker. Robin left Batman. Speedy, one of the original Golden Age sidekicks, got hooked on heroin. Martian Manhunter was deemed so ridiculously and irredeemably Silver Age that he was given a bus ticket off planet and virtually disappeared. An evil (or at least really tacky) conglomerate bought the frickin' Daily Planet, people. A depowered Wonder Woman tortured prisoners and used an uzi. The Flash was tried for murder. I mean, really, folks. What else do ya need to be able to see it? Hal Jordan having a sexual relationship with a 13 year old girl?! Oh, that's right; he DID.

So when Bizarro was reintroduced in the Bronze Age, all was not wacky fun and games. As we shall see in my next post... .

What Kids Don't Know: The Weeper

If, like me, you're a fan of the "Batman: Brave & the Bold"series on Cartoon Network, and watched the most recent episode, which was an amusing inversion of the show's usual perspective. It made the Joker the protagonist and Batman the antagonist. The Joker replaced Batman in the opening credits, re-styled as "Joker: The Vile & the Villainous". Oh, and that was after he blew up in the earth in the opening teaser. But that's not important right now...

Our focus is the main episode, where, true to the show's format, the Joker teamed up with another villain: The Weeper.

The Weeper is a sad-sack of a villain. He is, indeed, a sadness-themed villain, a former 'sad-faced' circus clown gone bad (and, amusingly, voiced by one of America's best-known sad-faced comedians, Tim Conway).

The B:B&B Weeper is unequivocally the Golden Age Weeper from Fawcett Comics, with the same name (Mortimer Gloom), the same foes (Bulletman & Co.), a nearly identical appearance, and the same sadness-based schtick. He appeared only a few times, and only once in a DC Comic proper.

That appearance was in Justice League of America 136 (a comic I bought as a kid), where he teamed up with-- you guessed it -- the Joker.

The Earth-2 Joker, that is; in fact, it was, I believe, the only appearance of the "Earth-2 Joker" during the multiversal eras. Their 'team-up' was only a few panels and mostly just an excuse to get some Earth-2 heroes together with some Earth-S heroes (Earth-S, for you youngsters, was the original version of Earth-5, and the home of all Fawcett characters, like Captain Marvel, Bulletman, and Mr. Scarlet).

That brief moment between the Joker and the Weeper was an obvious throwaway. But did that leave the writers of B:B&B without a template for their own Joker/Weeper team-up? Actually... no. They had Denny O'Neil's "The Sad Saga of Willy the Weeper".

During the "DC Explosion", DC Comics tried a lot of new series and concepts all at once. One was making its best known villain, a psychotic sadistic killer, the protagonist of his own series. Kind of like DC's own version of The Punisher.

Yes, the Joker had his own on-going series. Wherein he fell in love with Dinah Lance, kidnapped Charles Schulz, grabbed lunch and a movie with Lex Luthor, fought the Scarecrow with a truck full of butterflies, was defeated by Sherlock Holmes, and killed an average of one person on camera per issue. And so much more, in a mere 9 issues!!

But what matters to us at the moment is the time the Joker teamed up with "Willie the Weeper".

Now, this was Willie's one and only appearance and he is definitely not the Golden Age Weeper. Perhaps Denny O'Neill didn't want to use the original Weeper due to the multiversal implications; perhaps he wasn't even aware of him; or perhaps he just wanted to make a new character with a unique problem.

The original Weeper always shed crocodile tears for his victims. But Willie the Weeper was a criminal genius who would weep so uncontrollably for his victims that he couldn't complete his crimes. So (um, naturally) he went to the least victim-sympathetic villain he could think of for help:

The Joker.

Oh, and that other guy, with the cigarette, is Harold. A few panels later the Joker knocks him out and throws him down an incinerator chute to be burned alive. You should never do a walk-on in a Joker story; or smoke in his house.

Anyway, the essence of the story is that the Weeper feels like a wash-out as a villain, the Joker volunteers to help solve his problem, succeeds, one of them (naturally) betrays the other, and the Joker winds up crying while the Weeper winds up laughing.

Don't worry, kids! The Joker's not really crying; he's faking it... .

Sound familiar? Yes, it's the same as the underlying plot of the Brave & the Bold episode!

Oh, sure, there are huge differences, of course, such as the nature of the Weeper's problem, Batman's role in the story, the Joker idolizing the Weeper, and the final betrayal. I'm not trying to say that the episode isn't original; lack of originality is NOT one of the problems with Batman: Brave & Bold! The show excels at taking fresh approaches to exisiting characters and material, and the Weeper episode, incorporating both the Golden Age Weeper and the little known "Sad Sage of Willie the Weeper" and reinventing them both is just the latest brilliant example.

P.S. For anyone still unconvinced that Willie the Weeper was inspired by the original Weeper... Remember how I said that the original Weeper started as out as a sad-faced circus clown? His stage name was.... Weeping Willie (an obvious reference to American clown Emmett Kelly).

What Kids Don't Know; Niles Caulder

You know, Niles Caulder wasn't always a

manipulative megalomaniacal jerk.

Once upon a time (1963 in fact), there was a very smart character named Niles Caulder. He was created by zany Bob Haney and Arnold Drake. Who were they? Zany Haney, well, let's just say he was a man who had his own perspective on the DC Universe, a view now dubbed the Haneyverse; if you're curious about that, just go here and search for Haney. Arnold Drake did many cool comic book things but all you really need to know is he wrote O.G.Whiz, which means I love him, and you do, too.

Arnold Drake wanted to create a character kind of like the ineffably cool Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's smarter, older brother. Bob Haney liked to write, well, weird stuff about weird people. Behaving weirdly. Put them together and you got: The Doom Patrol.

The central figure they created to hold the Doom Patrol together was Niles Caulder, an inventing genius. Niles liked his work so much that wasn't quite picky enough about who he did it for, and it came back to bite him in the butt. Just like Leni Riefenstahl; but that's a different story.

Anyway, his one employer tended to confuse Quality of Life with Quantity of Life: General Immortus. Immortus wanted to live forever, possibly because it's really embarrassing to die when your name's "Immortus". He and Niles has a disagreement while Niles while working on making him an immortality serum. The disagreement was probably over the fact that Immortus had planted a bomb inside of Niles to keep him compliant. That's often a sticking point in union / management negotiations.

Niles managed to get the bomb out, but crippled himself in the process, leaving himself wheelchair-bound. But Niles was a great guy, with a great mind, so he wanted to help himself and other people like him, other great people whose greatness had been hampered by unfortunate accidents.

Daredevil race-car driver Cliff Steele, beautiful athlete and movie star Rita Farr, and hotshot test pilot Larry Trainer all become freaks after, um, freak accidents. Niles helped them cope with their conditions and find new purpose in life. They became not mere celebrities but heroes, using their new freakish conditions to help regular people and save lives.

Niles was a noble man, who not only overcame his own handicap, he helped others who might have otherwise wallowed in self-pity become saviors and inspirations to the world. And, after only five years on the comic scene, their final ending (in 1968) -- knowingly sacrificing themselves for a small group of total strangers -- was the capstone to their epic tale of rising above adversity.

UNTIL... two of most damaging blows ever dealt to the American psyche:

Watergate and Grant Morrison.

Of course, the Watergate scandal certainly wasn't solely responsibility for the American people's loss of confidence and trust in government and authority, but it surely symbolizes it. As a result of this growing cynicism, the world was ready for a less than flattering portrayal of the Doom Patrol's authority figure, Niles Caulder.

When the original Doom Patrol (more or less) were reunited in the late 1980s, Grant Morrison at liberty to write Niles Caulder cynically as a vicious, manipulative murderer. Since Morrison's re-start of the DP, we've learned that Niles orchestrated the accidents that gave the DP their powers, that he killed superhero Joshua Clay in cold blood, that he manipulates and lies to the DP and the entire superhero community. Lately he's been in cahoots with the evil President Cale of Oolong Island, the nation of villains, has commandeered a Kryptonian body and used it to attack the Doom Patrol and begin a takeover of the world.

Now, if you're a kid and never read any comics written before, oh, 1988, you might never know that this now-accepted version of Niles Caulder is just a cynical shellacking of a once great character with a modern disbelief in the idea of authority figures who truly wish to help change the world for the better while maintaining their own morality as well.

Once upon time, Niles Caulder (along with his teammates) was an inspiring model of devotion to the greater good, the human ability to overcome tragedy, and the power of avoiding self-pity through helping others. Now, he's a symbol of modern conspiracy-theory paranoia, distrust of authority, and anti-intellectualism.

The real Niles Caulder is still out there, kids; in fact, he recently guest-starred on the Batman: Brave & The Bold series. It's time you demanded to have him back as arole model, as my generation had, rather than the twisted mockery of him that your disillusioned elders have shafted you with.