SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Superman #43 by Patrick Gleason, Peter J. Tomasi, Joe Prado, Stephen Downer and Rob Leigh, on sale now.


The current Bizarroverse story in the pages of Superman is doing an excellent job of providing pathos to the usually one-note concept. Patrick Gleason and Peter J. Tomasi are making use of their final issues on the series by really building out Bizarro’s home world of Htrae into a real, living place within the DC multiverse.

Of course, we already know Bizarro, his family and close friends, but this week Superman's outgoing creative team introduced one final missing ingredient that seems so obvious in hindsight: Bizarro’s greatest enemies.

Bizarro Boys

Last issue, Boyzarro learned of the existence of Superboy and the non-Bizarro world of Earth. The unhappy lad decided to run away from home, leading to him crashing in on Jon Kent in his quest to find a friend and somewhere to hide from his father. The ruse doesn’t last too long, of course, as Superman quickly learns of Boyzarro’s arrival and endeavors to send the child home to his parents. But before he can accomplish his goals, he learns from the arrival of the swashbuckling Damian Wayne doppelganger Robzarro that several members of the Bizarro World’s own Justice League, the Super Foes, have gone missing.

RELATED: Superman #43 Gives Superboy’s Other Best Friend Her Own Codename

Superman and Superboy travel through the portal to bring the Bizarro Boys back home, but naturally a fight breaks out between Superman and Bizarro, who believes The Man of Steel responsible for the abduction of the Super Foes. Superman knocks Bizarro out of orbit and follows him to the moon to have a little chat, while the kids stay behind on the farm, with Robzarro making the moves on Damian Wayne's good friend Nobody while the real enemies lurk in the shadows.

Me Am Not Bizarro

While the Bizarro World concept goes back decades, it wasn’t until Geoff John and Eric Powell’s “Escape From Bizarro World” arc that we really learned how it functions. Their take placed more emphasis on Bizarro’s “Bizarro vision” power, which allows the creature to create Bizarro doppelgangers of Superman’s friends and allies in order to fill out his personal Metropolis. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely did something similar in the pages of All-Star Superman at the same time, introducing another version of Bizarro World with its own Bizarro Justice League and, most inventively, Zibarro, the Bizarro Bizarro.

RELATED: Boyzarro’s Arrival Will Shake Superboy to His Core

This week’s issue of Superman goes one step further by asking the question, "If Bizarro am not Htrae’s worst hero, who am not Htrae’s worst villains?{ With Bizarro in space following his fight with the invading Superman, his greatest enemies, the Legion of Fun, strikes, somehow changing the cubed world of Htrae into a more conventional globe. Featuring Bizarro versions of Captain Cold, The Riddler, Sinestro and more, and led by a Bizarro Luthor with a glorious head of hair, the Legion of Fun is revealed to be the ones responsible for the Bizarro Justice League going missing, as we see them trapped in the Bizarro version of a deathtrap… a ball pit.

The Legion of Fun is such an obvious concept in hindsight, it’s actually surprising that no one’s has done it before. It’s going to be a blast to see Tomasi and Gleason's new team handles a group of bad guys in a world where good deeds are villainous, and how Bizarro handles his role as Htrae’s hero in the face of such weird enemies. Bizarro stories always allow creators to cut loose, but here Tomasi and Gleason are really building on what we know about the very concept of Bizarros. The pair is turning the character from the one-note joke he’s been for so long into a gripping and dynamic part of the Superman mythos, as they have done throughout their run with so many other concepts.