In "To Quote a Phrase," I spotlight memorable quotes from comic books.

I continue a month of "To Quote a Phrase" by spotlighting the tragic kick off to the past adventure at the heart of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?". I have already done a few "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" bits, but I asked you folks if you wanted me to include this, one, too, and there was a hearty, "Yep," so here it is.

Bizarro made his comic book debut in the pages of Superboy, but soon, Superboy writer Otto Binder brought the character to Action Comics, where an adult version of Bizarro fought against Suprman for the first time...

Roughly a year later, Binder then expanded the idea of Bizarro to start a whole Bizarro World...

It was not until Jerry Siegel started the Bizarro World back-up feature in Adventure Comics with artist John Forte, however, that we really leaned into the whole Bizarro World concept...

You know, a square planet, and everything is like it is "opposite day" every day...

It's a great bit, really, and it's one that Alan Moore always loved. He and Kevin O'Neill were even going to do a miniseries about Bizarro World before DC decided to reboot Superman's continuity instead, with concepts like Bizarro World being jettisoned, as well (for a time, of course, everything cool in comics eventually gets revived by someone later on). Moore was then given the assignment of finishing out Superman's continuity before the reboot in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"

So anyhow, the main concept of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" is that Lois Lane is telling a reporter about the final days of Superman and the general consistent aspect of the story is that everything is MUCH darker than normal.

So, in Superman #423 (by Alan Moore, Curt Swan and George Perez), things kick off in the past with Superman meeting Bizarro, who has taken the "Opposite Day" aspect of his status quo to an absurd degree.

Superman came from a planet that was destroyed, so that means that Bizarro needs to destroy his own world, which he does...

And since Superman is alive, then Bizarro must be dead, so he kills himself, telling Superman "Hello" as he dies...

That chilling, "Hello, Superman. Hello" is amazing. Damn, Moore is such a genius.

In a personal note, my wife has still not read this comic despite me yammering about it for years now. Everyone should go shame her.

Okay, folks, if you care to suggest cool comic book quotes that you'd like to see spotlighted here, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com. There's a decent enough chance that if you think the quote in question is super cool than I, too, will find it super cool and feature it here. Not a 100% chance, though, of course. Let's say roughly a 60% chance. I do need a whole month's worth of these quotes, after all!