A rare example of Metropolis' counter-culture scene

[icon_uk]

Metropolis is usually seen as the "less weird" Gotham City.

Metropolis is all sunshine and clean urban lifestyle, bustling and somewhat wholesome, whereas Gotham is the twilight and shadows and overall slightly sleazy freakyness. The cities heroes and villains reflect that too of course.

But it's nice to be reminded that even Metropolis has it's... weirder side (Be warned there is one image which appears to be a form of self-harm)

Case in point - The Bizarro Scene

This is from 1982's miniseries "The Phantom Zone" by Steve "Howard the Duck" Gerber and Gene Colan, two people one wouldn't automatically think of in terms of Superman's more clean-cut world, but that might be for the best.

The overall story involves the pre-Crisis Phantom Zone villains breaking loose from the Zone (with some interesting flashbacks as to why they are there in the first place). Not all of them were on the levels of the Zod (attempted plantary takeover), Jax-Ur (blowing up a moon of Krypton with an errant missile) or Faora (a psychopath who started a concentration camp for men where she could abuse or murder them as she saw fit).

Two of the slightly "lesser" miscreants were Az-Rel and Nadira, both exiles from Bokor, Krypton's lawless "Island of Thieves" and very unusual inasmuch as they were Kryptonian mutants, possessed of psionic powers in their own rights, as you shall see.

They were in a very odd co-dependent relationship, neither capable of feeling any sort of emotion, but aware that at some level they belonged together BECAUSE of that lack of empathy.

How that impacted on their trip to the real world we shall now see. Whilst the "big" villains are out causing suitably large scale problems, Az-Rel and Nadira don't care about any of that. They're out sampling Metropolis' edgier side...



Bear in mind that being born after 1961 would still only make these people 21 or younger.









And your parents told you that rock and roll was dangerous!

I confess that I don't think I'd come across this sort of character in comics before then. Villains were usually.. grandiose, larger than life, or at least had a PLAN. Nihilism was a new concept to me, and two emotionally dead characters causing death and mathem because they just didn't care about anything, was a deeply troubling one for little Icon_UK

Comments

[freezer]

So the Shooting Superman trope doesn't just apply to the officially criminal population...

[icon_uk]

The what now?

[freezer]

Shooting Superman: Basically the tendency of bad guys to watch the hero get shot multiple times to no effect, then reload and try again. Or throw the gun at them. Or hit them with chairs. Or in this case: Watching someone break a dagger with their throat, then throw a bottle at them.

[bizarrohulk]

In fairness, there's always the off-chance that a superhero might turn out to have an inexplicable vulnerability to bottles or chairs. The Golden Age Green Lantern, for example.

[mastermahan]

"Holy crap, those two are apparently invulnerable and just set a guy on fire with their minds! I should pick a fight with them!"

[freezer]

In fairness, that's a completely different trope.

[mastermahan]

Wait, if this is Bizarro music, doesn't that mean that Supergirl and Wonder Woman *aren't* party poopers?

[burkeonthesly]

What else would you expect from a Bizarro pean of gratitude?

[nate_abril96]

Oh my goodness I just finished reading this yesterday! Haha! What are he odds? I thought it was pretty okay, even if it was pretty dark. Though I got to admit that the parts where Superman and Kweskill (or Quex-Ul) were trying to escape the Phantom Zone was pretty... out there to say the least.

[beyondthefringe]

Wow. I don't even recall these two... I wonder if they got a brief mention in Who's Who in the Phantom Zone article.

We need more social, artistic, philosophical, religious, and otherwise movements based on the unique things you only find in a superhero world.

[icon_uk]

The PZ mini-series was the only place that Nadira and Az-Rel ever appeared.

Grant Morrison did give us the mutant art scene in his X-Men run, with mutant fashion designers etc, though usually by mentioning it, rather than showing it to us.

[jlroberson]

Which is a shame. Gerber & Colan opened up an entirely new tone and angle on the Superman mythos with this story and almost no one ever tried to work that furrow again, nor has DC ever reprinted this.

I mean, in some ways this is the proto version of what Alan Moore would become famous for later, though it's more of a re-phrasing than retcon. I like how everything normally comforting in the Superman stories of the time here becomes a bit unsettling--without actually changing anything. And DC likes a "dark" look at its characters now? Well, here's an example of that done correctly, and in 1981 for godsake.

Steve Gerber is a writer who does not get his due, and who should be thought of as far more than a satirist. He was one of the first to start exploring the unspoken implications of superheroes, again, as Moore would be known for later.

PS

[jlroberson]

...and one major characteristic of this was Gerber's refusal to present violence as trivial, cathartic or without consequence--which sometimes gets his work labeled as excessively violent, but its' more that he was describing violence how it really is, and that's ugly. I seem to recall a description of what it actually feels like to have a Kryptonian crush your hand, for instance. He was very concerned with making you think about all the violence you see depicted that the Code made look soft and ultimately harmless till then.

[espanolbot]

Well there's the Sons of Batman from Dark Knight Returns, the Church of Superman from Kingdom Come or its sequel, I think in Planet X there was a religion that cropped up as a semi-revived pagan deal based around how Thor's existance in the Avengers proved how Norse Gods were real... there was a counterculture movement in the New 52 based around how the Joker is seen as a counterculture icon. Effectively they were tons of protestors made up of middle class white kids who wanted to ensure the police or Batman weren't mistreating him.

Grant Morrison in Seven Soldiers went in an entire bizarre tangent about how there's a superhuman fetish culture in the DCU, which had people getting turned on just by people demonstrating superpowers. There was one woman who effectively a porn star, but all she did was get shot at in a costume while people filmed it.

Though this was also a thing in one of the Superbuddies stories, where Fire posted pay-per-view videos of herself on fire online, where people who thought that she was naked under the fire gave her money just to watch her just kind of pose. Fire (whose idea it was) got understandably kind of annoyed when pre-villain Max Lord claimed that she was exploiting people by tricking them into thinking that it was porn, and makes her stop as a clause in hiring her for his new superteam.

[icon_uk]

Not sure I see the idea of a superhero fetish culture being that bizarre to be honest (and not just for the obvious, selfish reasons).

Given the truly astonishing things one can find on the internet, the notion that some people might be turned on by the, usually model-pretty/handsome and physically perfect people in costumes that leave little to the imagination and performing some supernatural ability seems more or less inevitable.

[espanolbot]

Less bizarre in the sense that I can't imagine people getting turned on by it, but in Morrison's story the people presented as having the fetish aren't shown in the most positive light. Like the new Bulleteer's husband wants her to be a superhero because superhumans are hot, and his attempt to make her fit his needs results in him dying and her having to quit her job due to him effectively disfiguring her by coating her in a metal skin.

People getting superpowers by accident, through birth, or a desire to help people through the application of their knowledge or skill I can get, someone getting superpowers because some other person thought that she'd be more attractive/won't age that way is pretty weird (to me at least) though.

Though that part of Seven Soldiers was all about the sexual objectivism superheroines endure (ie the attitude shown by David S Goyer in reality is also demonstrated by people IN the DCU as well), in an inside out kind of way.

[jlroberson]

Isn't this though more of a Metropolis version of punk, with an equivalent of the Devo philosophy thrown in(which is clever)? Keep in mind, NY punk was still very much a living thing at this time. It's pretty much directly a version of that.

Wendy Y Bother and the Nouns

[7dialsmystery]

"Wendy Y Bother and the Nouns" Okay, I'm not old enough to get this pop culture reference. Any ideas?

Re: Wendy Y Bother and the Nouns

[icon_uk]

At a guess, Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics

Re: Wendy Y Bother and the Nouns

[jlroberson]

Precisely that, and "Bizarro" here can be thought of as an equivalent of "Devo," because that's VERY much like Mothersbaugh & Casale's "de-evolution" concept.

[donnblake]

So... Krypton instituted Phantom Zoning for crimes of petty theft?

[icon_uk]

Nadira and Az-Rel tended to leave a lot of bodies behind when they were stealing. Muggings usually ended up with a carbonised pile of former victim courtesy of Az-Rel or, at best, racked with unspeakable agony for as long as Nadira found it diverting.

[donnblake]

Well that makes more sense. But "Petty Theft," isn't the first phrase I'd use to describe those crimes.

[icon_uk]

I'd suggest that that's what makes them scary, they don't see themselves as anything other than petty thieves in spite of the bodycount.

[karunya]

Having a birthdate of July 30, 1961, I heartily agree with the premise of this story. ;)

[junipepper]

Huh. Glad to hear someone around here is even older than me! ;-)