7 Marvel Villain Rip-Offs Who Became Beloved Characters In Their Own Right

Superhero comics are a medium based on, for lack of a better term, rip-offs. Basically every everything ever created by Marvel and DC Comics is a rip-off of something; stories follow tried and true recipes, and homages are often the name of the game. This goes double for characters. Characters get ripped off all the time; sometimes, the company will rip off characters from another publisher, but they’ll just as often rip off their own characters. This happens a lot with villains; there are certain villain tropes that appear in the rogues galleries of every major hero, and this has led to a lot of villains being rip-offs.

Marvel may not have created the superhero or the supervillain, but they’ve greatly expanded the kinds of characters that can fit into either category. The House of Ideas have copied their distinguished competition and themselves when it comes to villains numerous times, and sometimes, it’s led to those villains becoming greater than they could have been. These seven Marvel rip-off villains have carved out their own niche, becoming something no one would have predicted.

7) The Builders

Jonathan Hickman’s run on the Avengers was amazing. The writer had to create a whole new cosmology of sorts to tell this multiverse-shaking epic and created the Builders, an ancient race of aliens who were immortal and helped create the multiversal order as we know it. They’re basically just the Oans, and even have servants meant to fight for them, both biological and technological servants. The Builders played a key role in the first half of his run, showing readers the stakes of everything, and are an important part of the last great Avengers story. A lot of people don’t remember them, but that doesn’t change what an important part of Marvel history they’ve become.

6) Mikhail Rasputin

The X-Men have a lot of great villains, and Mikhail Rasputin usually isn’t considered one of them. He’s not a bad character; he works well as a foil to Colossus at times. However, one of this biggest problems is that he’s a rip-off in the worst way, although, most fans would have a hard time identifying who he’s even ripping off. Rasputin is basically the Russian version of Jamie Braddock, the older brother of Brian and Betsy Braddock, both of whom have acted as Captain Britain. Both Mikhail and Jamie have reality altering powers and both of them are mad, just in different ways. Jamie is an insane British aristocrat who can do pretty much whatever he wants, while the eldest Rasputin is the long-suffering, sad, and brutal type of madman that Russian literature produces. Mikhail was just a major villain of the Krakoa Era, which isn’t too shabby for a rip-off.

5) Hobgoblin

Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin was Spider-Man’s most iconic villain after his death, because he ticked off a box that arch-villains don’t always get to: he killed Spider-Man’s girlfriend and then died, becoming a villainous saints of sorts. Marvel had been trying to figure out a way to replace him for years when they finally decided to just start over again with a new character. Thus, Hobgoblin was born. There was a major push to make the villain a major Spidey villain, and the mystery of his identity became a huge focus of stories. Hobbie never reached the level that he was supposed to, but he’s been a pretty recognizable villain in his own right. There have been more Hobgoblins over the years than Green Goblins, proving that if nothing else, at least the gimmick is over.

4) King Hyperion

King Hyperion is a rip-off character on several levels. For one, Hyperion is one of Marvel’s most underrated heroes, a Superman pastiches that has numerous multiversal versions across different titles. King Hyperion was a major villain in Exiles; the team went to his Earth, where he had killed everybody. Hero, villain, it didn’t matter, all fell before his power, and the Exiles had to figure out a way to defeat a foe that had been unbeatable up until that point. Exiles has steadily become less and less remembered by fans as the years have gone by, but King Hyperion keeps showing up in fan discourse, his story is one of the few of the team’s tales to have any weight to it.

3) Deadpool

Deadpool has become a Marvel legend, gaining levels of popularity that no one could have predicted. That’s not to say this rip-off of Deathstroke the Terminator wasn’t popular back in the day; he certainly was but it was at a whole other level. During this time, he was a straight-up villain, menacing mutants for the most moolah from anyone who would pay him. Back then, he wasn’t the fourth-wall breaking comedian he is today; he was just a mouthy mercenary out to get Cable and X-Force. The dangerous comedian aspect of the character was what made him so beloved, and put him on the road to becoming the comic industry’s most popular anti-hero. While it can certainly be argued that he isn’t a villain anymore, he only became as popular as he did because of his time as a villain.

2) Romulus

Wolverine has faced off against some deadly villains, with Romulus having immediately joined the ranks of his greatest foes. If I had to describe the mutant villain, the best way is to call him older Sabretooth, because that’s all he is. He has all of Wolverine’s powers, except along with super strength just like Sabretooth, and has finger claws instead of ones like Wolverine’s (although he does have gloves that give him claws like that, so it looks like he has that many). Everything else about the character is a hundred percent Victor Creed: he’s smart, he makes longterm plans meant to mess with Logan’s brain (remember when Sabretooth tried to convince him he was his father? That’s not much different than trying to make him think he was from a group of mutants called the Lupine), he loves to kill people and takes pleasure in their pain. While it’s hard to say that he’s a popular villain, he’s become one of the most important to face the ol’Canucklehead.

1) Omega Red

Omega Red might not seem like a rip-off, but he’s basically just Wolverine, but Russian. He’s a mutant who was chosen to become a weapon because of his powers, was experimented on by the government, and given weapons made of a nigh-indestructible metal. Omega Red was treated like a big deal right away; he was beating the X-Men pretty much singlehandedly in battle when he first appeared (that was the second major story from the team I had read; I’ve see so many copies of X-Men (Vol. 2) #6 in the wild, especially back then). He jumped right into the ranks of Wolverine’s most popular ranks from the start, his story mirroring Logan own in many ways, down to a tragic childhood and mistreatment by the people who made him a weapon.

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