DC's 7 Best Copycat Villains, Ranked

DC Comics created the original superhero universe, then the original superhero multiverse, and have been on the cutting edge of the comic industry for decades. Looking at the history of the publisher and then looking at the characters of other companies, it’s plan to see just how obviously people have copied DC over the years. However, that doesn’t mean that the company hasn’t also copied their competition – and the greats of their own past – one their way to becoming the best superhero publisher (and they are). Nostalgia and familiarity make loads of money, especially in fiction. Creators wants to make something new, but they also want to take old ideas in new directions, so they’ll often create copycats.

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DC has created some of the most important villains in comic history, ones that have inspired many copycats. However, there are plenty of DC villains who have been copied from other characters; several are the greatest villains in the publisher’s history. These are the seven best DC copycat villains, mimics who proved that sometimes you don’t need to be unique to be amazing.

7) Red Lion

Black Panther is a Marvel icon, but DC decided to take their version of the character in a new direction. Red Lion was created by Christopher Priest, the best Black Panther writer ever, during his run on Deathstroke in DC Rebirth. He was the president-for-life of the African country Burendunia and wore promethium-weave armor, much like Black Panther’s vibranium-weave armor. Red Lion was a cool little pastiche villain, one of Priest’s more fun moments in recent years.

6) Epoch, Lord of Time

Shazam was the first Captain Marvel, created as a Superman pastiche. He wasn’t the only Superman pastiche publisher Fawcett Publications made, though. Dr. Sivana was his arch-foe and it’s plain to see that he was based on both the Ultra-Humanite, the original bald comic supervillain scientist, and Lex Luthor, who we’ll talk about later. Sivana would make the move to DC with the Marvel Family when the company took over Fawcett after successfully suing them for their copies, where he would get to fight alongside the villains who inspired him.

5) Magog

Kingdom Come introduced loads of pastiches in the form of its legacy heroes and villains, but Magog was the most interesting. One of the main points of Kingdom Come was that the extreme heroes of the ’90s were bad compared to what came before and Magog was based on heroes like Cable, who exemplified the ’90s to Mark Waid and Alex Ross. He had the cyborg arm on the same side and once his helmet came off, they had the exact same face. Their powers were different and Magog didn’t carry a thousand guns, but he was meant to lampoon Cable and his ilk.

4) Mongul

Thanos is one of Marvel’s most beloved villains, himself a copy of Darkseid. The Mad Titan made quite a splash in his first few years and it wouldn’t be long until DC got their own Thanos, from the creator of the villain. Jim Starlin had started working at DC again in 1980 and along with writer Len Wein created Mongul. While the villain has been taken in much different directions from his forebear, it’s plain to see where the lord of Warworld came from.

3) The Extremists

The Extremists hail from Earth-8, a world called Angor in the post-Crisis DC Universe. They battled the Champions, an Avengers pastiche, and each of them was based on a Marvel villain. The leader Lord Havok was Doctor Doom, Dreamslayer was Dormammu, Gorgon was the Doctor Octopus, Tracer was based on Sabretooth, Doctor Diehard was the Magneto, and Barracuda was Namor. They’ve made numerous appearances over the years, and are a deep cut favorite of many DC fans.

2) Lex Luthor of Earth-One

So, to understand this one, we have to go into the weeds of DC continuity, one of my favorite places. Okay, so the original Lex Luthor was known as Alexei Luthor and had red hair. He was smart, but he wasn’t the mad scientist he’d become. However, Superman did fight a bald mad scientist back then in the form of the Ultra-Humanite. At some point in the past, Lex was swapped with that villain, losing his hair and becoming a supervillain scientist. This version of the villain would become the Earth-One Lex, while the original ginger Luthor, who was more of a crook than a scientist, stayed on Earth-Two.

1) General Zod

Superman faces DC’s greatest threats and one of the most dangerous has always been General Zod. Zod is what I like to call an “evil opposite villain”. These bad guys are based on the heroes they fight, but are opposites in ways that make them evil. The Kryptonian general is a copy of Superman in a lot of ways. They have the same powers and species, obviously, and both of them are devoted to their homeworld. While there are differences, Zod was one of the first evil Supermen and has become an icon.

What’s your favorite DC copycat villain? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!