Marvel Comics has revolutionized the superhero many times over the years, taking the rougher elements of it and forming them into something beautiful. Take the shared universe; to an extent this was always a part of superhero comics, as all of the characters knew each other and hung out, but there was no real continuity to it. Stan Lee overseeing the entire Silver Age Marvel line of books made it easier to create this new kind of superhero universe and changed comics forever. However, for every shared universe, there’s the Avengers; a team that is basically just the Justice Society/Justice League. While the House of Ideas is often given all of the credit for making superhero comics into something more than they were, the truth of the matter is that most of the time, Marvel has been copying their competition, just filing off the serial numbers.
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This has even extended to story ideas. Over the years, the publisher has seen what was working across town and decided to give it the ol’college try. This has led to numerous copycat storylines over the decades. Sometimes, these comics live up to the ones that inspired them years before. Other times, they fail miserably, unable to reach the heights of the books that made them possible. These are the five best Marvel copycat stories, rip-offs that run the gamut from great to the worst pap you can read.
5) “Age of Revelation”
“Age of Revelation” is Marvel’s latest X-fail, a story meant to homage one of the most legendary stories in the publisher’s history. I’m speaking, of course, of “Age of Apocalypse”. This 30-year old classic sent readers to an alternate universe ruled by Apocalypse and it was an instant hit, taking the X-Men’s penchant for amazing alternate universe stories to the next level. Marvel would try several times to recapture lightning in a bottle, with sequels and spiritual successors like “Age of X” and “Age of X-Man” popping up. Most of the time, the House of Ideas tried to expand on the formula, but unfortunately, what readers got wasn’t anything to write home about. It’s the perfect example of a copycat story fail; it took the same pieces of the last one but didn’t do anything interesting with them. It’s not even a year old yet and it’s already become something of a cautionary tale for how not to do a copycat story.
4) Inhumans vs. X-Men
Marvel’s Inhumans push was short-sighted, one of the most foolish decisions in the publisher’s history. Since they didn’t own the film rights to the X-Men anymore, the brass decided to just slot the Inhumans into the mutants’ place, all while ignoring everything that made the Inhumans a unique, fun idea. Fans realized what was going on right away (which was honestly kind of easy; Marvel barely tried to pretend that they were doing anything else) and the various Inhumans titles ended up being a bust. However, there was one last Hail Mary and that was Inhumans vs. X-Men, a story that pit the two groups against each other over what to do with a force of great power. That’s a story that Marvel readers had seen before, in 2012’s Avengers vs. X-Men. That story pit those two teams against each other, with the X-Men acting as the chief antagonist of that story. Inhumans vs. X-Men did much the same thing, going out of its way to make the X-Men look bad. The irony is that they actually failed completely at making the mutants look like the bad guys and the whole thing backfired on them.
3) Spider-Man: Reign
The Dark Knight Returns is one of the greatest comics in the history of the medium. This 1986 masterpiece took the pieces of the Dark Knight that were always there – the darker elements of a man’s mission for revenge against a concept – and brought them back to the fore. It changed the way superhero comics worked for years; the grim and gritty aesthetic spread across the industry. Many modern comics are basically just rip-off of this classic but one wore that on its sleeve: Spider-Man: Reign. This story took readers to a future where Spider-Man quit after something terrible happened and New York City has become a fascist police state. This leads to Peter putting back on his costume and battling against the forces that have corrupted his city. The story did overdose a bit from its grim subject matter – when most people compare it to The Dark Knight Returns, it’s not in a positive way – but some of us actually like it for what it is (I’m one of those; there are barely any of us out there).
2) Secret Wars
Secret Wars is a story with several parents, the first of which is the most obvious. 1984’s Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was the publisher’s second event comic, a 12-issue toy commercial of a comic that pit hero versus villain for the grandest prize in creation from the mysterious One From Beyond. Both stories involved the Beyonders and groups brought together to a place called Battleworld, with Doctor Doom playing a huge part. However, the 2015 event comic had another parent, one that was itself partly inspired by Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars: Crisis on Infinite Earths. Secret Wars dealt with the fate of the multiverse as well and was supposed to make people think that Marvel was about to reboot their universe (there were rumors that we’d get something closer to the MCU, making movie synergy the whole point of the line), giving it Crisis energy. These two stories played a huge role in the fate of Secret Wars; personally, I’d say that it was better than its 1984 predecessor but isn’t as good as Crisis.
1) Avengers: Twilight
Avengers: Twilight is an amazing story, and that’s all there is to it. This book took place in a future where the Avengers were destroyed on H-Day, when Ultron unleashed his ultimate attack against the superhero community. The destruction of the heroes led the government to step in and a fascist government rose up, one that used the iconography of the old superheroes to oppress the public. Eventually, Steve Rogers, his super soldier serum rendered inert and one of the team’s few survivors, rejoins the fight against evil. Behind it all is a shadowy enemy, one who has been trying to destroy the Avengers and the United States for years. While this story definitely plays into current political anxieties, it pays homage to one of the greatest DC stories ever: Kingdom Come. A lot of people considered Earth X to be Marvel’s Kingdom Come, but Avengers: Twilight took that honor from it and has become a modern classic.
What’s your favorite copycat Marvel story? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
