50 Greatest Super Villains In Comic Book History

36. Bizarro

(Write-up by Nick Tylwalk, Bam Smack Pow Editor)

Apparently trying to make a copy of Superman sounds like a good idea, because people keep trying to do it. There’s only one Man of Steel, of course, so duplicates usually end up turning out all wrong, or if you’re really unlucky, they turn out as Bizarro.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Bizarro has often been silly and harmless, especially during the Silver Age, and he’s definitely more misguided than evil. We had some internal debate over whether we should even count him as a villain, ultimately allowing each voter to decide. Enough people decided he should count as a bad guy, so here he am … er, is.

It’s actually a great concept, giving the powers of Superman to someone mentally and physically flawed. It works even without the backwards gimmick, though that has its place too.

Plus, if we’re talking about cultural impact, you could easily argue that Bizarro belongs much higher up this list. We’ve been using his name as an adjective for a long time, and you don’t need to explain it to most people for them to know you mean something opposite or much weirder than you’d normally expect. The term even made a prominent appearance on an episode of Seinfeld back in the day.

I have a feeling that at least the Silver Age Bizarro would probably be sad that he ended up on a list of the greatest super villains because he doesn’t consider himself one. Or wait, maybe he’d be happy, because normal people would be sad in that situation. That backwards thing does get confusing after a while.

Next: No. 35: She'll do more than make you itch