Bizarro: Year None #1 – This Is Am Not Solid Start For Bizarro Comic Story

Bizarro: Year None #1 is a solid setup for this sure-to-be-twisted look at The Man Of Steel’s backwards doppelgänger. Smith and Carrasco take their time establishing Jimmy Olsen as a new employee of the Daily Planet looking to be more than the coffee / errand boy for Perry and the rest of the staff. The duo also set up and give Metropolis it’s larger than life feeling as they show that The Toyman is the current villain causing havoc in the city.

Nick Pitarra art and Michael Garland’s colorwork steal the spotlight here with the splash-page of the toy solider sticking its bayonet into the Planet. The page has multiple Easter eggs, although the statue of Superman in the lower left corner feels a touch anachronistic for the time period of the story. The splash page later on in the story of Perry and Jimmy walking and talking also has a nice flow that works to show action without disturbing the narrative.

Unlike some of the other comics Smith has written the immature humor that tends to leak into his work, is scaled back in this issue, possibly the influence of Carrasco, whose foray into comics includes WB’s Supergirl (2016–2019), Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021), and Justice League vs. the Fatal Five (2019). There are hints of it in there with certain characters like Steve Lombard an Cat Grant.

The weakest sequence of the issue is the explanation of how Perry and Jimmy end up on Bizarro’s world, but doesn’t really take readers out of the story since it is the way the story shifts to the Bizarroverse. It will be interesting to see where the story heads as the version of Bizarro- Superman seems to be under some sort of outside manipulation, that masks the version of Bizarro that is recognized in the Superman mythos. Wheather this is / isn’t the definitive origin of Bizarro in the All-in era remains to be seen but it should be a wild ride either way.