Bizarro: Year None (2026) #1
by
Kevin Smith (writer), Eric Carrasco (writer), Nick Pitarra (artist), Michael Garland (colours) and Dave Sharpe (letters)
My rating: 2.5 of 5 Ω‘s
I honestly had no real expectations reading this book.
The main reasons I picked it up were:
1. Kevin Smith is usually god fun and a geek and I’ve enjoyed his superhero comics mostly.
2. Nick Pitarra is someone whose artwork I really liked in The Manhattan Projects.
Bizarro as a character is one that has always had a solid niche fan-base but his various forays into the stories has been starkly hit and miss. Not an easy character to write and very much an oddity in every way. The 60s original was clone of Superboy, created by a scientist with a duplicating ray, Bizarro was a kind of Frankensteins’ Monster – shunned for his wierdness, befriended by a blind girl and then sacrificing himself to cure her blindness and end himself. Thereafter Lex Luthor and others created the adult version that is most familiar to comic fans over the decades and led to the creation of Bizarro Lois and eventually even “Htrae”, the cube shaped bizarro replica of Earth.
This version seems to be interested in really starting over. Which could end up being a good thing or a bad thing as the story unfolds. Re-imaginings have not the greatest track record for success.
Anyway, this first issue spends the bulk of its time with Perry White and Jimmy Olsen and does an utterly fantastic job of setting up both characters, their personalities and their dynamic. Here we are in the early years of Supermans public existence and Clark and Lois are out of town and amidst a hilarious setting involving a broken-down giant Toyman robot, young Jimmy is essentially debating Perry on why his younger perspective is needed in the floundering medium of journalism and especially print-news. Meanwhile there is a scientist (also named Dalton, like the one from the first 60s comic) who is at the harbour demonstrating a duplicating machine which Perry doesn’t want getting covered by the news as his last attempt destroyed part of the Daily Planet offices. The short version thereafter is that it is not quite a duplicator it seems. From it comes forth some kind of Superman clone – slightly different but not too much. He kidnaps them through the portal before it pops away. They then end up in the Bizarro world which is definitely a pretty different rendition of the one we know; at least it seems so on the surface for now, my guess is that it will start to break down and become the one we know at some point in the mini series.
So the lens of the story is squarely so far through Jimmy and Perry and it works surprisingly well. Making them the protagonist for now works better I’d wager, rather than trying to tell it with a greater focus on the Bizarros themselves. It is a very banter-heavy issue and uses Smiths skill there well and credit to the script doing a nice job showing the gruff old Perry without making him a cliche and the same for Jimmy as the optimistic young aspirant. Of course we end the issue with a bit of a cliff-hanger questioning the nature of this new Bizarro and all around him and that is fine – seemingly indicating we are going to go in the direction of the more villainous version of Bizarro rather than the funnier or goofier or just plain unpredictably odd-ball.
The biggest highlight by far and away is the artwork by Pitarra. He seems to be heavily channeling Frank Quitely and I mean that as the highest praise. Franks work on All-Star Superman is a high-point in the characters library and there is a bright, energetic, double-page spread and dense feel to every single page and panel that makes you want to explore and look at all of every single panel and see what is happening. I really liked it and I want to come back as much if not more for the art than the story.
BOTTOM LINE:
I would call this a great first issue that sets a stage nicely and I will read the next and hope that the rest of the series is able to go the distance after a solid starting sprint.
One Happy Monk 
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