SPOILER WARNING! If you haven’t yet watched episodes 1-3 of Season 2 of “Superman & Lois” you may want to give this post a miss.
Fans watching early episodes of Season 2 of “Superman & Lois” who are unfamiliar with the history of Bizarro may have been confused with the creature’s powers.
While the concept of Bizarro first materialized in “Superboy #68” (dated October 1958), that version of the creature was destroyed in that comic book issue. The “mirror image” of Superman had his first interaction with the adult Man of Steel in Superman’s daily newspaper strip around the same time in episode 105 in a story titled “The Battle With Bizarro”. It was in this newspaper strip that Bizarro’s strange way of speaking was first introduced.
The Bizarro concept would make his first appearance in the main Superman books in July 1959’s “Action Comics #254”. Created when Superman was duped into stepping within range of Lex Luthor’s Duplicator Ray Machine, Bizarro was an imperfect double of the fullgrown Man of Steel.
While “Superman & Lois” has flipped Bizarro’s speech patterns (literally) with the character’s dialogue needing to be played in reverse to be understood, the creature’s powers weren’t always depicted as they are on the TV series.
In his Silver Age comic book appearances, Bizarro’s powers were the same as Superman’s. It wasn’t until “Superman #305” and “Superman #306” (November/December 1976) that Bizarro’s vision and breath powers were flipped. Instead of having heat vision and freeze breath like Superman, Bizarro displayed freeze vision and fire breath.
In the story Bizarro thinks Superman has destroyed Bizarro World, but Superman convinces him that it was just a mirage and that Htrae still exists.
