Superman is the greatest hero in comics. Sure, he’s not the most popular anymore (although I would still say he’s the most well-known), but superheroes as we know them wouldn’t exist without him, for good or for ill. When you compare a hero to the Man of Steel, everyone knows what you mean; it means a hero of the utmost purity, a person who has decided to exemplify hope and lift up those around them. Over the years, anyone who has made superheroes has created an analogue of the Last Son of Krypton, introducing disparate versions that allow creators to tell new stories with their Superman-alike.
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Sometimes, these creators want to tell a very different kind of Superman story, making this figure of hope and heroism into a monster. Recent years have seen characters like Homelander rise to prominence, but he’s not the best of the evil Supermen. These are the seven best evil Superman alternatives and most of them are better than Homelander.
7) Overman of Earth-17
Grant Morrison’s Animal Man is a masterpiece and it basically invented Homelander in 1990 with Overman of Earth-17. This character was created when Psycho-Pirate started to shed beings from the destroyed multiverse from the Medusa Mask, thanks to being the last repository of the old multiverse. Overman was created to be the perfect superhero in a government experiment, got an STD, and went berserk, killing his fellow superheroes and threatening to detonate a bomb that would destroy his world when Crisis destroyed it. He tried to use the bomb upon arrival, but was stopped when Psycho-Pirate gave up the Medusa Mask. Somewhere in 1990, one pictures Garth Ennis reading this and filing it away for later.
6) Homelander
Evil Superman copycats are a dime a dozen nowadays and we have Homelander to thank for it. The comic version is in some ways different from the show – for example, many of his worse actions were performed by Black Noir, who was a clone of him in the book – but he was the character that brought the evil Superman back to pop cultural awareness in a big way back when The Boys comic first started. The show version is better in a lot of ways than the comics, but he still holds a special place in the history of the comic medium.
5) The Void
The Sentry was created in the year 2000 to take a Superman-alike hero and make him Marvel style. So, they gave him the power and the prestige but they also gave him major mental problems to wrestle with, which would manifest physically as the Void. The Void was the dark inverse of the Golden Guardian of Good; everything that he did for good, his dark side tried to destroy. He’s an Earth-shaking threat every time he shows up, armed with the power of a million exploding suns and nothing pure inside him to temper his evil.
4) The Plutonian
Mark Waid is in the middle of one of the best modern Superman runs on Action Comics and has written the Man of Steel many times over the years. He’s one of the best Supes writers ever, so when it was announced that he was going to create his own evil Superman, fans were interested. Irredeemable introduced readers to the Plutonian, the Earth’s greatest hero and a symbol of hope, and followed him as he was corrupted and became the world’s greatest villain. Waid was able to capture the fall from grace of a Superman-alike brilliantly and it’s shame that this series can be as hard to find as it is.
3) King Hyperion
Hyperion was created to be a Superman analogue for the Avengers to beat and was the leader of the Squadron Supreme. There are numerous Hyperions in the Marvel Multiverse and King Hyperion is the most dangerous. He tried to take over his world, but the governments of the planet fought back, leading to a nuclear war that killed everyone but him. He was recruited by the Timebreakers and sent throughout the multiverse doing their terrible bidding. He was a monster by the time the Exiles fought him, slaughtering heroes and trying to conquer worlds.
2) Overman of Earth-10
Overman of Earth-10 is a Superman who landed in Nazi Germany in the days before WWII, helping them take over the Earth. He would become the leader of the Nazi version of the Justice League, the New Reichsmen, and in some versions of Earth-10 became the leader of the Nazi Party after the death of Hitler. In The Multiversity: Mastermen it was revealed that he had started to hate what he had become and was supplying info to the Freedom Fighters from the inside, showing that maybe there was still a tiny part of the hero that Kal is on other Earth under all of the Nazi indoctrination.
1) Ultraman
The Crime Syndicate are some of the Justice League’s greatest villains and they’re led by Ultraman. Earth-3 (or Earth-Three, depending on the version of the multiverse) is where everyone good is evil and Ultraman is the evil version of Kal-El. He’s the most powerful villain on his planet, holding power over the world and the team. He’s such an evil opposite of Superman that in some versions of Earth-3, he even ingests Kryptonite to gain more power. He’s the ultimate evil Superman alternative, a role he was quite literally made for.
Who’s your favorite evil Superman alternative? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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