Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… Bizarro…?!?

Superman’s imperfect clone is returning to comics in the latest issue of Action Comics, as superstar writer Jason Aaron begins his three-issue run as Action writer alongside artist John Timms. It’s not just the first time Aaron has written the Man of Steel — something that he shares below made him more than a little cautious — but it’s the start of a year-long initiative at DC called Superman Superstars, wherein Action Comics has a rotating group of writers throughout 2024, each telling their own story featuring the Last Son of Krypton.

To mark the occasion(s), Popverse has the opportunity to speak to Aaron about writing the iconic character, his DC comic book past, and where his head is at as a writer at the start of 2024.

Popverse: I want to talk to you about Action Comics, but I saw you at Thought Bubble in November and you were talking about how so much of your early comic reading was DC stuff, and was — for want of a better way of putting it — weird DC stuff like Atari Force and Blue Devil. Did that feed into choosing Bizarro for this arc? It's more off kilter, off-beat stuff than I think people might expect from you.

Jason Aaron: Maybe somewhat. It certainly fed into what I am doing with Batman: Off-World, and that being my first Batman book and first, what I feel like is my debut as a DC writer. I knew that I wanted to do something different and something that spoke to some of those books, like you said, that made me a fan as a kid.

And I've been reading Batman and Detective regularly since I first developed my pull list. Those are two books that have been on it the entire time, right? Otherwise, it's a list of books I read for a while and come back, fall off, come back. Those [two books], I've been reading the entire time. So it wasn't all oddball books I was reading! The Superman books were the other books I jumped on pretty quickly.

I think, really, the fact that I'm using Bizarro for this didn't come from anything in particular. Certainly, before I got the call from Paul Kaminski saying, "Hey, do you want to write a story for Action Comics,” I wasn't walking around with the Bizarro pitch in my pocket. It was a character I read and that resonated with me in times here and there, but it wasn't anything in the forefront of my mind in any way whatsoever, wasn't a character I already felt like, ‘oh, I have something I really want to say.’

I knew as soon as I started working for DC, like, ‘okay, I'm going to do Batman first. That makes sense.’ I've learned over the years to just go with what feels right in the given moment as things pop up, or change ,or shift or whatever. And this just popped up out of the blue and one, right away I knew the answer was yes, even though I don't know what I'm going to do.

But if you get offered Superman you say yes.

Absolutely, yeah. On Action Comics, no less, for sure! And Paul told me a couple of the other names that were involved in this Superman Superstars idea and I was like, "Yes, absolutely." Everyone who was working on it was doing a different story, focusing on a different villain, and I quickly focused on Bizarro.

So maybe the root of it is subconsciously going back to, like you said, the more offbeat titles — especially that time in the '80s when I got into the comics, [and] DC was publishing such a great diverse array of different genres and different characters. There were still war books. There were so many great DC Westerns, there were a lot of fantasy books they did in the '80s that I loved in addition to some of the were offbeat superhero stuff. So, that diverse array of stuff really appealed to me. But with Bizarro, I just focused in on, “I think I can say something interesting with this character in a way I don't think anybody has before.”

This story is surprisingly sad for a Bizarro story, if that makes sense. Bizarro is the comedy character for a lot of people. Bizarro is the go-to joke and you give it a grounding and a melancholy that I don't think many people would necessarily be expecting.

I think, on the one hand, I right away knew I wanted to give him a different power set and have him just be a different sort of threat to Superman than what we've seen before. Yeah, we know he's Superman's doppelganger, he’s got all his same powers. And one, I knew I wanted to have a big fight, just the two of them duking it out. And then to bring magic in the equation and have him use, to me it made sense. Of course, he would be really good at magic, right? I had to ask Mark Waid, "Am I wrong? Has anybody done this before?" And Mark Waid gave me approval so I felt like that's all I needed. That's getting it from Jor-El himself. So I knew that was a part of it.

I just wanted Bizarro to be able to punch Superman in a way that we hadn't seen before. And that means many things — that attack we get [is] a piece of that, and it grows and evolves as the story goes along.

The other part of it is, yeah, like you said, Bizarro is usually just the ridiculous character, the funny character: He talks weird, he does everything in reverse. As I went back and started, there are Bizarro stories that I'd loved over the years I'd been reading comics —particularly those couple issues when he's in Grant's All-Star Superman, I love that portrayal — but, when you go back and read some of them, especially the Bizarro World stories from the '50s, they are very much played for wacky laughs: Look at how ridiculous this guy is, and all of his people from his planet. But as I read him, I felt so sad. I felt so sorry for this guy and he's just like, “Hey man, I'm just trying to live my life. This is just who I am. This is the way we are. And you're just like, telling me how stupid and terrible and ridiculous [I am], and I'm just a mistake, basically, is what you're saying. That Superman's the cool guy and I'm just his ridiculous, pathetic opposite."

I just came away with this great sympathy for Bizarro. Like, man, it's got to really suck to be that dude. And you feel, like, “well, he is got his own planet, right? He's got a whole planet of other people like him” — because the Bizarro we're using here is the one who does come from Bizarro World, he’s the one we had seen in the Pete Tomasi, Pat Gleason Superman stories where he is got his son Boy-zarro — but when we meet him in this story, that's all gone. He can't find his way home. His home doesn't seem to be there anymore. So you take that guy and you have him alone in this universe that really just despises him and makes fun of him, and that pushes him to some dark places.

When you got the call to do Superman, were you daunted? You say yes, but you're probably terrified at the same time, right?

“Terrified” is probably not an inappropriate word to use, which I think on the one hand it's good. I think to me, I've always found that to have a little bit of that with a project-- I followed Garth Ennis [with] some Punisher, which even saying that now, I'm like, that makes me a little terrified. And I did that, but that terror is healthy, I think to inspire you to like, “man, I am afraid to do that, which means I should really do it and try to step up and do my best.”

Yes, Superman in general, I absolutely felt that. I've been doing this for almost 20 years, I've written so many different characters that I grew up reading as a kid, so it's not my first rodeo, but still getting a call and being asked to write Superman felt different. It definitely gave me a charge I hadn't felt in a while. So again, the first thing I did was call Mark Waid and told him my pitch before I told anybody else just to be like, “how do I write Superman? How do I write comic books?” It just felt like, “I don't want to screw this one up. I got to get this one right.”

Did having just three issues make it easier or harder?

Well, it definitely helps that there are three 30 page issues. So there are three bigger issues, which I love. I've been doing a lot of stuff that's in that 24 to 30 page range, which is luxurious, right? I absolutely love it. So that, I never worried about, like, “oh, am I going to have room to do what I want to do?” I knew that many pages, I can swing big, do big stuff. I never felt constrained in that regard. And also with 30 [pages], you can put big stuff in there and also do big visuals. I wanted John Timms to be able to swing big with the action stuff and the weird, creepy Bizarro stuff we get in this story, and have room to do that and I feel like he did. I feel like John's doing some of the best work he's ever done with this story.

Did it leave you wanting to do more Superman? Did you get a mode of, oh, I know how to do this, I know who this character is and I want to do more?

Most assuredly. Yeah. I knew right away this is going to be an amuse-bouche, right? This is delicious, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it, but it has not sated my hunger in any way. I've only scratched the surface of really saying anything about Superman, or with Superman, or figuring out who he is. So I absolutely would like to do more Superman stuff. This is starting off my relationship with DC by doing Batman and Superman. It's not a bad way to make a debut. I feel like it's pretty good.

It's very low-key, obviously.

Right. [Laughs] I would've preferred to have done Blue Devil and Blue Beetle, but Batman and Superman are not that bad.

I'd love to read your Blue Devil, I’ve got to be honest.

You never know. Well… I won't say anything. [Laughs] But yes, I would love to write Blue Devil.

Was that a tease? That was a tease. [Laughs] I don't want to say “where's your head at,” but I feel like you were really focused in on Marvel for a while. Now, you're working in creator-owned, and DC stuff. You've talked about doing more Marvel stuff again in your newsletter. Does this variety all feed into you being able to be more creative and it all feeds into this greater hunger to tell more stories?

That's a big question. It's a big question to talk about the progression of my career. I was very happy at Marvel. I started at DC, and then I was at Vertigo, but I think of that as its own little secret clubhouse within the halls of DC. And then [I] spent so many years at Marvel, [and] still have great relationships there, still doing some things at Marvel, but just my career reached that point where I wanted a change. I wanted to break away from doing one ongoing book after another after years and years of that. Wanted to not be exclusive so I could work wherever, take any phone call that would come my way.

And the other thing is I just really wanted to dig into, again, those characters that made me fall in love with comics, [in] the very first place. I literally wouldn't be here without those books in '84, '85, '86 that DC was publishing - that was my gateway drug. That was the thing that hooked me and that made me fall in love with reading comics — that ultimately made me fall in love with wanting to write comics. And now, here I am all these years later, so it just seemed like the right time. There were times along the way when I was at Marvel where I had the opportunity to come back to DC and just the timing was never quite right. Now it is.

Especially after the last few years where we've all been through whatever craziness we've each been through and we've all gone and talk about us all going into our own cocoon — and some of us are still coming out of it and figuring out what kind of butterfly have I turned into, or back into a weird caterpillar, whatever the metaphor was [laughs], we're still all becoming something. I think part of that, to me, is that it just felt like now's the time to change, now's the time to do different stuff. And so, last year was a year of transition and working on a lot of characters I'd never written before. This year, you'll be seeing the fruits of that.

I couldn't be more excited to have Action Comics be the first one of those new projects out of the gate this year. I think that sets a bar for all the other stuff I'm excited about in 2024, and you'll see more of those books with me writing for DC Comics.

You're the first of the Superman Superstars on Action, so I’m curious: who would you, as a reader, want see write Superman? You said in your newsletter the other week that you thought that Phillip Kennedy Johnson's Action was great and I completely agree, but who would you, as a reader, as a fan, want to see writing Superman after you?

I'll shout out the other creator that I mentioned as being my two favorite creators of last year in the newsletter, and the other one was the other Johnson, Daniel Warren Johnson, I don't think has ever done Superman's story. I don't believe he has. But yeah, seeing Daniel write and draw a Superman story, I'd definitely pay money for that.

And yeah, Phillip Kennedy Johnson, I became a huge fan of his, his Action Comics was a part of that. His Hulk book that he's doing right now is really phenomenal. That Action run was really, really incredible beginning to end. So again, it's an intimidating thing to step on and come right after that, but hopefully people will enjoy this first of these Superman Superstar arcs. I think it's going to be really fun.

The first issue of Jason Aaron’s Action Comics run, #1061, is available now.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions