Corrupted Character Copies in Comic Books.
The following have their own pages:
Other Comics:
- In Bratpack, the main cast are expies of famous superhero/sidekick duos:
- Batman Parody Midnight Mink is a Depraved Homosexual who molests Robin analogue Chippy.
- Captain America and Bucky Barnes analogues Judge Jury and Kid Vicious are racist steroid junkies.
- Wonder Woman copy Moon Mistress is a castration-happy Straw Feminist, and Wonder Girl copy Luna is a nymphomaniac airhead.
- Green Arrow-Iron Man hybrid King Rad is an alcoholic adrenaline junkie more concerned with getting a rush than helping others (and is persistently wasted when he isn't), and Speedy analogue Wildboy is a severe drug addict. (Note that Green Arrow himself struggled with his thrill-seeking tendencies in a Bronze Age Justice League story, Iron Man constantly struggled with alcoholism, and Speedy infamously struggled with drug addiction.)
- Subverted with True-Man, the comic's Superman Substitute, who was was a genuine hero who sought to help people and actually uphold justice before he left Slumburg and when he returns, the sidekicks gleefully watch him kill their "hero" mentors.
- Invincible:
- Omni-Man starts off as a clear Superman Substitute, but is revealed to be a scout for his species, a race of intergalactic imperialists intent on conquering the Earth.
- Given The Reveal Omni-Man is actually more similar to Goku being a scout from a super strong alien Proud Warrior Race that takes over planets and like Goku Omni-Man falls in love with a human woman and raises a son (Gohan/Mark) who has a dorky superhero persona and unlike his father doesn't want to be a warrior or kill people. However Goku lost the cruelty of his species upon arriving on Earth, while it takes much longer for Omni-Man to let go of his brutal intergalatic warrior code.
- His son Kid/Young Omni-Man is a Robin expy with no qualms about killing. He later has a My God, What Have I Done? and becomes more traditionally heroic.
- Robot starts off as an expy of the Doom Patrol's Robotman; he succeeds in taking over the world, killing off most of the remaining superheroes in the process.
- Rex Splode is an expy of Gambit, except with all the dashing rogue elements taken out and replaced with utter douchiness. Also while Gambit is loyal to his superpowered Action Girlfriend Rogue, Rex cheats on Atom Eve, boinking Duplikate when she isn't around.
- The second Darkwing, a Batman/Nightwing expy, straight up murders criminals.
- Omni-Man starts off as a clear Superman Substitute, but is revealed to be a scout for his species, a race of intergalactic imperialists intent on conquering the Earth.
- Irredeemable:
- The Plutonian asks the question of "what if Superman turned evil?". While he first appears to be a straight example of the Superman Substitute before his Face–Heel Turn, it's shown he has a lot more demons in his past than Superman ever had. He had a troubled childhood that psychologically damaged him compared to the Man of Steel's Upbringing Makes the Hero (though it's no excuse for his actions), his powers proved somewhat of a hindrance, and his motive for heroism was less "wanting to do good things" and more "secretly Love Hungry and Can't Take Criticism".
- Alana Patel is one of Lois Lane. She was what Lois would be like if she only dated Superman for the prestige that came with dating the world's greatest hero and sold him out the second he revealed his Secret Identity to her.
- The Hartigans, Plutonian's foster parents, are corrupted copies of Jonathan and Martha Kent. Whereas Ma and Pa primarily focused on raising Clark to be a good and kind person who thinks of others and made sure he had a good head on his shoulders, with the Superman persona being Clark's own chosen method of how he uses his powers to help and protect the little guy, the Hartigans (the father Bill especially) set out to raise their superpowered adopted son to be a hero from the start, which only gave the poor kid a major martyr complex and a belief in his own "special" status while also denying him the love and stability that would have allowed him to better handle the strain of being a superhero.
- Before The Boys, there was Marshal Law:
- Marshal Law himself is probably one to Judge Dredd. Wears something that resembles a uniform worn by Dredd, sees himself as THE AUTHORITY and kills with no hesitation.
- Public Spirit is a spoof of Superman who is portrayed as a jingoistic jackass, an obvious riff on the idea that being raised by rural white conservative parents (like Superman's adoptive parents, the Kents) would make one an Ideal Hero.
- Private Eye, the comic's take on Batman, is portrayed as a classist jerk whose "crime-fighting" consists of kidnapping poor people and performing gruesome experiments on them. He also arranged his own parents' deaths, not that they didn't deserve it.
- The Persecutor, the Punisher stand-in, takes Public Spirit's jingoism even further, gunning down leftists and minorities because he thinks they're a threat to America.
- The Jesus Society of America is a parody of the Justice Society of America, right down to the initials. They're every bit as racist, sexist, and jingoistic as you'd expect people from the 40s to be.
- The Secret Tribunal mocks the X-Men by calling out the absurdity of using what's more or less a power-fantasy to tell a story of being "outcasts feared by the world" and pointing the unpleasant undertones of the idea of mutants being "the next stage of evolution".
- Planetary:
- The Big Bad Ensemble the 4 are directly based on the Fantastic Four, with similar concepts and powers, and an origin story involving something happening to them during a space flight. Specifically, they're a very dark take on the idea that Reed Richards Is Useless; they actively suppress any technological advancements they discover, even if they would benefit mankind.
- An early issue revolves around a dimensional-travel experiment that attracted a group of supervillains from another world who are twisted counterparts of the Justice League, with matching powers and similar appearances.
- Historic characters in the book include Lord Blackstock, a version of Tarzan who explicitly considers himself superior to the "natives", and the Dead Ranger, a counterpart to The Lone Ranger who, like the original, uses silver bullets and never shoots to kill ... because his bullets actually contain mercury to kill his enemies slowly.
- The Red Ten was created because Tyler James wanted to write a murder mystery involving the Justice League getting picked off one by one, but knew that DC would never go for it, so he created the Alliance as expies, and gave them various Dark Secrets to kick off the murder plot.
- Top 10 has a team of older superheroes as Justice League stand-ins, who faked a war with an alien species and are all pedophiles who molested each other's wards. Atoman ends up manipulated into committing suicide rather than face imprisonment (since the cop manipulating him knew there'd be severe collateral damage if he went down fighting and would probably get a light sentence due to being rich.)
- In The Transformers (Marvel), initial series writer Bob Budiansky has stated that Shockwave was meant to be a Decepticon version of Spock—being just as emotionless and logic-driven as the Vulcan, but unlike the noble and honorable Spock, Shockwave was a treacherous, power hungry villain.
- The Umbrella Academy:
- Reginald Hargreeves aka the Monocle is a clear expy of Professor X being the dapper head of a school of gifted youngtsers, whom he is the father figure to. However Hargreeves is what you get if you take away all the cuddly and loving qualites of Charles Xavier and dialled the Stern Teacher and Manipulative Bastard aspects of the Prof up to eleven. While Xavier geuinely loves his students, Hargreeves only sees his team as tools and his Training from Hell and Lack of Empathy got so bad, most of the Hargreeves siblings hated their father's guts and shed no tears at his funeral. He's also a full blown alien, rather than just a mutant.
- Luther aka Spaceboy while still heroic is a deconstruction of Cyclops with some Beast thrown in. He's the straight laced no-nonsense leader archetype deeply loyal to his surrogate father whose love interest has a Story-Breaker Power and has trouble with matters outside the field of battle, except while teammates listen to and respect Cyclops, Luther gets derision and apathy from his siblings who put on Jade-Colored Glasses long ago and find his loyalty to the man who brutally raised them irritating at best and agrovating at worst. Also unlike Cyclops or Beast, Luther struggles with concept of having a normal life at all due to his condition and for a good while becomes an obese Broken Ace after the world is saved.
- Diego aka The Kraken is the worst traits of Wolverine and Batman (an Anti-Hero who butts heads with the boy scout of the team) compiled into one person, being a Loving Bully whose jerkassery far outweighs his nicer traits and comes off as a Nominal Hero at best. Additionally unlike Batman or Wolverine, Diego's I Work Alone attitude nearly gets him killed as he lacks a lot of the abilites to back it up.
- Klaus aka the Seance is many ways is a Gender Flip of Jean Grey being the Psychic Powers user of the team who has/gets (in Jean's case) Resurrective Immortality. Except while Jean besides the occasional Power Incontinence is a bright, healthy and well groomed heroine, Klaus is a dark drug-addled wreck who happily sleeps in a morgue and whose special training with his father figure mentor unlike in Jean's case only extubated his mental problems rather than curing them.
- Vanya also bears similarities to Jean, being the most powerful of the team whose latent abilities had to be locked away by their respective mentors and the release of said powers causing all hell to break loose (as well as having plenty of sexual tension with the bad boy of the team). Except while Jean is beloved among her team, Vanya is largely seen as The Load by her siblings and whereas Jean was Forced into Evil and became Drunk with Power before having a Heroic Sacrifice, Vanya more or less willingly betrays her loved ones and rather than pulling a Heel Realization, nearly kills everyone by making a chunk of the moon fall to Earth. Vanya does get marginally better in the sequel comics though.
- Five can be seen as an expy of Cable being a gun-toting time traveler who wants to prevent the Bad Future he was sent to and grew up in, except while Cable beneath his gritty '90s Anti-Hero behavior is a genuinely good person, Five is an outright Sociopathic Hero.
- Scientific Man is the unholy combination of both Dr. Manhattan and Superman. While the former o'l Jonathan Osterman is hardly The Cape in his source material being Above Good and Evil he still didn't hurt humanity and wasn't villainous which obviously goes for Supes as well. Scientific Man on other other hand openly declares that he sees mankind as a "disease" and as soon as he breaks free from the Extranormal Prison he was placed in, starts pulls a Eye Beam-spamming Beware the Superman towards everyone in his way.
- In Usagi Yojimbo, while Zato-Ino seems to be a straight-up tribute to Zatoichi, his life as a vagabond with a price on his head has made him much more violent, cruel, and paranoid than his inspiration.
