The Psycho Rangers / Comic Books

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• The Authority: During the "Transfer of Power" arc, the Authority were replaced by the G7 Authority, made up of corporate- and government-backed versions of each member. Jenny Sparks was replaced by the Colonel (of Britain); Swift was replaced by Rush (of Canada); Hawksmoor was replaced by The Street (of America); The Engineer was replaced by The Machine (of Japan); Midnighter was replaced by Last Call (of Italy); Apollo was replaced by Teuton (of Germany); and The Doctor was replaced by The Surgeon (of France).
• The Outsiders: In Batman and the Outsiders, Maxie Zeus formed a team called the New Olympians with each member being a counterpart to one of the Outsiders. Specifically:
  • Antaeus = Geo-Force
  • Diana = Katana
  • Nox = Halo
  • Proteus = Metamorpho
  • Vulcanus = Black Lightning
• Charlie's Angels: The 2018 comic book introduces Elka, Naomi and Franzinka, a trio of female assassins collectively known as Helena's Satansbraten.
• The Dandy: The comic featured The Jocks & The Geordies; A strip about two Five person teams doing everything possible to abuse, beat up, insult and undermine the other team.
• The DCU loves these. The Injustice League was made up entirely on one-for-one matches with the Justice League of the time.
  • Other examples include the Hyperclan, a band of so called heroes who are copies of the Justice Leagues core members, but they are in fact White Martians posing as heroes for their invasion.
  • The Injustice Society is also the name given to repeated team-ups of bad guys meant to counter the Justice Society of America.
• The Flash: Inverted with the Renegades, a group of 25th century policemen who model themselves after the Rogues, since the 25th century's most dangerous criminal is the Flash's Evil Counterpart.
• Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps is an Evil Counterpart to the Green Lantern Corps, and most of the members of the former are Evil Counterparts to individual members of the latter (sometimes to a ridiculous level). And taken even further with the reveal of new Lantern Corps. Mildly subverted in that most aren't actually evil: the already-mentioned Sinestro Corps is a pretty straight evil example, the Red Lanterns are a berzerker Blood Knight Corps, most of whom have an (actually pretty justified) ax to grind against the Guardians, and Orange Lantern Larfleeze is certainly criminal but is mostly too distracted by the shiny to be truly evil. A handful (Blue Lanterns, Indigo Tribe, even Star Sapphires) are friendly, or at least neutral to the Green Lanterns.
• Heroes for Hire: The nineties incarnation once faced a team called Strikeforce One who had been literally cloned from them by the Master of the World. They comprised Demi-God (Hercules), Knight Errant (Black Knight), She-Cat (White Tiger), Stinger (Ant-Man), Dragonfist (Iron Fist), Behemoth (The Hulk), and Amazon (She-Hulk).
• The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk's Evil Twin, the Red Hulk (before his Heel–Face Turn), joined forces with the Evil Counterparts of the other Defenders to form the Offenders: Red Hulk (Hulk); Baron Mordo (Doctor Strange); Tiger Shark (the Sub-Mariner); and Terrax (the Silver Surfer). There's also a Red She-Hulk in the mix.
• The Infinity War, the sequel to The Infinity Gauntlet took this trope for all it was worth by creating an entire army comprised of evil counterparts of nearly all the Marvel Universe heroes at the time.
• Spider-Man: The New Avengers arc of The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski) featured a team of evil Avenger doppelgangers working for HYDRA. Their costumes were basically green and yellow palette-swaps of the originals with the HYDRA octopus logo added on. "Militant" for Captain America, "Tactical Force" (though he prefers Karl) for Iron Man, "the Hammer" for Thor and "the Bowman" for Hawkeye. Spidey, of course, pointed out how done-to-death the evil twin thing was, and none of them ever faced their "originals" (albeit Hammer and Bowman had the justified excuse that Thor and Hawkeye were technically dead at this point). None of them were captured, but they haven't shown up since then (except for the Facebook game, Marvel: Avengers Alliance).
• Justice League of America: James Robinson's run had a team based off Jack Kirby's New Gods. The truly bizarre thing is that this was a team of Psycho Rangers that never actually encountered their heroic counterparts, as they debuted after the death of the New Gods during Countdown and Final Crisis.
  • Doctor Impossible = Mister Miracle
  • Tender Mercy = Big Barda
  • Hunter = Orion
  • Neon Black = Lightray
  • Chair = Metron
• In Justice League Dark Volume 2, Circe is inspired by Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom to form an "Injustice League Dark." In addition to Circe herself as Wonder Woman's counterpart, there's Floronic Man for Swamp Thing, Papa Midnite for Doctor Fate (John Constantine not being a current member), Solomon Grundy for Man-Bat (both formerly human Batman villains), Klarion the Witch Boy for Zatanna (both from "lost tribes" of witches — if Zatanna's mother's origin is still intact), and Teekl the cat for Detective Chimp.
• Legion of Super-Heroes has the Legion of Super Villains, which features some original villains, but in all incarnations features Lightning Lord, the older brother of Legionnaires Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass. The comic versions usually also feature Cosmic King and Saturn Queen, counterparts of Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, and, rarely, Chameleon Chief and Sun Emperor, counterparts of Chameleon Boy and Sun Boy.
• In Les Légendaires, Anathos, after defeating and brutally scarring the Legendaries, use the blood they left behind them to create magically engineered clones of them in order to prepare for their return. Referred as the Hellions ("Infernaux" in French), those clones were identical to their heroic counterpart physically, except for their skin/hair/eyes colours, and used the same names with the prefixe "Dark" (Dark-Shimy, Dark-Jadina, etc). Much like the original Psycho Rangers, they possessed upgraded version of the Legendaries' abilities and psychotic personalities. Ironically, they still ended up biting the dust, since the Legendaries Took a Level in Badass by the time they had to face them.
• Fantastic Four: In Marvel Comics, the U-Foes are explicitly described as Psycho Rangers to the Fantastic Four, with identical origins (though not identical powers; the only one that comes close enough is Ironclad to the Thing), although they usually fight the Hulk (he interfered in the events that gave them their powers as they tried to deliberately recreate the FF's origin).
  • The Frightful Four, despite its ever-changing roster, was created by the Wizard (a Mad Scientist Evil Counterpart to Reed Richards) to be Psycho Rangers to the Fantastic Four. For instance, one incarnation featured the Wizard (Mister Fantastic), his friend the Trapster (The Thing), his ex-wife Salamandra (Invisible Woman), and someone unrelated to him who just happened to be Hydro-Man (Human Torch). Eventually he forces his daughter Cole to join the group and throws out the Trapster to make room. Cole, who is a love interest to Johnny Storm, then takes up the Human Torch role while Hydro-Man fills the Thing space. Invisible Woman once observed that the Frightful Four's threat level has only ever been undermined because all iterations of the team lack a clear bond in the style of the Fantastic Four themselves, although she then expressed concern about what might happen if the Wizard ever managed to assemble a genuinely effective line-up for the team.
    • Carried to its 'ultimate' extreme in Ultimate Fantastic Four, where the Frightful Four are the counterparts of the regular (read Ultimate, in this case) FF from another universe, just with about fifteen more years of experience. Oh yeah, and they're flesh-eating zombies.
• The Blitzkrieg Squadron in the Marvel Universe were created as a Nazi counterpart to the heroic Howling Commandos.
• Most incarnations of the Masters of Evil in Marvel Comics are constructed in this manner.
• Norman Osborn, the Villain with Good Publicity also known as the Green Goblin, leads two groups of Psycho Rangers, as part of Dark Reign:
  • The Dark Avengers are an interesting example; a supposed hero team who are actually posing as their counterparts. In addition to Ares and The Sentry as themselves (going along with it because one's morally ambiguous and the other's just plain nuts — though Ares replaces Thor and/or Hercules to some extent), the line-up includes Venom (Mac Gargan, previously known as Scorpion) as Spider-Man, Moonstone as Ms. Marvel, Noh-Varr as Captain Marvel, Bullseye as Hawkeye and Daken as Wolverine. Norman leads the team as the Iron Man-Captain America mashup Iron Patriot.
    • Osborn later revives the Dark Avengers concept with a new team featuring Skaar, Son of Hulk (The Hulk/Red Hulk); Hawkeye's brother Trickshot (Hawkeye, duh); The Gorgon, Wolverine's deadliest enemy (Wolverine); Ragnarok, a robotic clone of Thor infamously created by Tony Stark's side during Civil War (Thor); Ai Apaec, a sinister sort of arachnid god (Spider-Man); June Covington, a deranged geneticist Osborn met in prison (Scarlet Witch); and Superia, a Straw Feminist Mad Scientist with super strength (Ms. Marvel). Norman himself becomes the new Super-Adaptoid, making him the only Dark Avenger without any real analogue. Skaar turns out to subvert his role, being Captain America's Mole in the team. John Walker, aka U.S. Agent, has occasionally been a member of such a team as a counterpart to Captain America. However these Dark Avengers didn't match up well with the actual Avengers they faced. For instance, there was no counterpart for Luke Cage in either incarnation, and neither team of Dark Avengers actually fought a team with Hawkeye or Scarlet Witch as members. Likewise there was no Hulk on the team when Skaar was part of the Dark Avengers, and so on.
  • The Cabal are Psycho Rangers to Iron Man's Illuminati: Norman himself takes Tony's place, and the rest are Emma Frost (Professor X); Doctor Doom (Mister Fantastic); Loki (Black Bolt of The Inhumans); The Hood (Doctor Strange); and Namor (er, Namor). Then come Utopia, Emma and Namor reveal their intentions and leave the Cabal, so Osborn has to pick up someone to fill the spot. Apparently Taskmaster was the next best option.
  • Namor later formed a new Cabal in New Avengers, which includes the likes of Thanos and Maximus the Mad (Black Bolt's brother). The villains aren't exact parallels to the members of the Illuminati, but share the same goal (protecting Earth-616 from Multiverse incursions). The difference is, the members of the Cabal are willing to commit mass murder on a cosmic scale to save their reality.
• The original Soviet Super Heroes team primarily featured clear counterparts to The Avengers team they often opposed. Perun, the Slavic god of thunder, was the Thor counterpart; Sputnik/Vostok, a calculating android, was The Vision counterpart; the Red Guardian, uber-patriotic Soviet supersoldier, was the Captain America analogue; Surge, a man in a suit of Powered Armor, was Iron Man; the feral Sabercat was the Beast, weapons expert Vanguard was Hawkeye, the mystical Darkstar was the Scarlet Witch, etc.
• Marvel's Russian national superhero team (variously called the Soviet Super-Soldiers, the Supreme Soviets, the People's Protectorate, or the Winter Guard) while not usually villainous as such, was often in conflict with The Avengers, and several of its members were Avengers counterparts. Red/Steel Guardian = Captain America; Crimson Dynamo = Iron Man; Perun = Thor; Ursa Major = Beast; Vostok = Vision. The new incarnation of the Winter Guard introduced in The Avengers (Jason Aaron) can be seen as a counterpart to that incarnation of the team: Guardian (now Vanguard), Dynamo and Perun remain counterparts of the Big Three, but now Ursa Major = Hulk and Darkstar (who didn't have a counterpart before) = Captain Marvel. New members Chernoberg and Red Widow are roughly counterparts to Ghost Rider and Black Panther.
• The original Hellions to the New Mutants: Tarot to Dani Moonstar (Psychic) Empath to Karma (influencing others), Jetstream to Cannonball (living rocket pack), Catesye to Wolfsbane (animal shapeshifter), Tarot to Magik (magic user), Thunderbird to Sunspot (strong guy), and Roulette to Magma (ranged attacks, although their actual effects are very different).
• Rawhide Kid: In Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven, when the Big Bad Cristo Pike learns that the Rawhide Kid and the Seven are coming for him, he recruits a team composed of villainous counterparts of the Seven. These members (and their counterparts) were Bloody Ivan (Kid Colt), the Cabo Kid (Rawhide Kid), Grizzly Johnson (Red Wolf), Honey Bee (Annie Oakley), Kid Dead (Billy the Kid), Le Sabre Kid (Doc Holliday), and the Lone Ninja (Two-Gun Kid).
• The Pride were this for Runaways. Bonus points for being their parents, so each pair served as this for their respective kid, either playing on similarities or contrast between them:
  • Alex and his parents are Badass Normals, strategists and leaders.
  • Nico and her parents are all magicians.
  • Karolina shares her parents' powerset
  • Gert and her parents are often voices of reason in both groups
  • Chase is Book Dumb delinquent, to contrast his parents, a pair of Mad Scientists.
  • Molly and her parents are all mutants, but while her mutation manifested as super strength, they are both telepaths.
  • The only other story involving The Pride sets them in the past, where they clash with The Illuminati, serving as this trope to them:
    • Iron Man — Geoffrey and Katherine Wilder
    • Reed Richards — Victor and Janet Stein
    • Doctor Strange — Robert and Tina Minoru
    • Namor — Dale and Stacey Yorkes
    • Black Bolt — Frank and Leslie Dean
    • Professor Charles Xavier — Gene and Alice Hayes
• The Shadowpact (DCU again) has the Pentacle, set up by a witch called Strega, which "just happened" to feature counterparts to the magical heroes. (Strega herself is the counterpart to the Enchantress; Jack of Fire to Blue Devil [and turns out to be his brother; Sister Shadow to Nightshade; Bagman to Ragman; Karnevil to Detective Chimp (kinda); and White Rabbit to Nightmaster.) However, in-universe the similarities are commented upon by Bagman, who notes that it felt as if this version of the Shadowpact was composed specifically to handle the Pentacle. In a sense, the Shadowpact can be viewed as good Psycho Rangers, making this an Inverted Trope.
• Shazam!:
  • The Black Marvel Family, Black Adam's equivalent to Captain Marvel's group of friends: Black Adam for Cap himself, Isis for Mary Marvel, and Osiris for Captain Marvel Jr. (even though Isis had a very different relationship with Adam than the one Mary Marvel has with Marvel). Although, while they existed, Black Adam was on a Heel–Face Turn, so they weren't Evil Counterparts so much as Dark Counterparts.
• In the Silver Age, DCU (again) introduced the alternate Earth of Earth-3, where the counterparts of the JLA were known as the Crime Syndicate. After massive retcons, there are two versions of this — the Crime Syndicate from the Antimatter Universe, and a new Earth-3 with the Crime Society, which are more like the JSA than the JLA.
  • Bizarrely, to this day there are neither Earth-3 nor Antimatter versions of the Martian Manhunter or Aquaman, or at least none that have ever been seen in comics. There have been brief mentions of 'a White Martian' and 'Barracuda', but that's as far as it goes.
  • The New 52's version of the Crime Syndicate introduced an evil Aquaman called Sea King. Also new to the group are Deathstorm (evil Firestorm), Atomica (evil Atom), and Grid (evil Cyborg).
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), there's at least three groups.
  • The Suppression Squad, Mirror Universe counterparts of the Freedom Fighters.
  • The Destructix, a group of mercenaries led by Scourge the Hedgehog, Sonic's Mirror Universe counterpart, and his girlfriend Fiona Fox
  • Eggman later unleashed a series of Metal-series bots comprised of Metal Sonic, Metal Tails, Metal Knuckles and Mecha Sally.
• The various criminals and mercenaries Vader recruits in Star Wars: Darth Vader collectively serve as a villainous counterpart to the main Rebel heroes:
  • Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker
  • Boba Fett to Han Solo
  • Black Krrsantan to Chewbacca
  • Doctor Aphra to Princess Leia
  • Triple-Zero and BT-1 to C-3PO and R2-D2.
• Deathstroke's "Titans East" of Teen Titans comics, which included The Match, an evil clone of Superboy (who had, by this point, degenerated into as good a clone of Superboy as Bizarro is of Superman); Inertia, an evil clone of Kid Flash, and Kid Crusader, who is...the only person Slade could find who had ever heard of Kid Devil while also wanting to kill him. They also had Joker's Daughter, Enigma (both chose to style themselves after their inspirations the same way Tim Drake sought out Batman, although Deathstroke probably didn't know that), a brainwashed Batgirl for Robin, and Risk (a former Titan who lost his arm and decided against a prosthetic) for Cyborg.
  • Later on there was Clock King's Terror Titans, made up of original characters who used power suits and modeled themselves after older villains. As it turned out, none of them had any connections to the Teen Titans, except for Dreadbolt, who was the son of Bolt, a Blue Devil villain, making him a sort of rival to Kid Devil.
  • The Legion of Doom from the final Teen Titans arc before the New 52 were built around this. Superboy-Prime for Superboy, Headcase for Raven, Sun Girl for Solstice, Inertia for Kid Flash, Indigo for Red Robin, Zookeeper for Beast Boy, and Persuader for Ravager.
• The Liberators from Volume 2 of Marvel's The Ultimates are an Axis of Evil counterpart to the title team. The Colonel being the Iranian counterpart to Captain America, Abomination the Chinese Hulk, Crimson Dynamo the Chinese Iron Man, Perun the Russian Thor, Hurricane the North Korean Quicksilver, and Swarm the Syrian Wasp.
  • There were later the Dark Ultimates, the Ultimate counterpart of the above-mentioned Dark Avengers. Reed Richards acts as the team's leader and Iron Man parallel, while the Hulk acts their counterpart to Thor. The rest of the team however (Kang, the Human Torch, and Quicksilver) don't match up as exact analogues to the Ultimates.
• The Infinite Comics' comic book tie-in to Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) had a five issue story, Rival Schools, about the Maggia forming a team of teenage supervillains who each paralleled someone from Nick Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. training program. The group consisted of Arachnikid (Spider-Man), Dark Matter (Nova), Overcharge (Power Man), Black Bunny (White Tiger) and Skull Punch (Iron Fist).
• W.I.T.C.H. has two examples:
  • In the second story arc Nerissa, leader of the past generation of Guardians before turning evil, created the Knights of Revenge, with Tridart as Irma's counterpart, Ember as Taranee's, Shagon as Cornelia's, Khor as Hay Lin's, and Nerissa herself to her successor Will. In a variation, Shagon and Khor's powers don't actually match those of their counterparts (Cornelia has control over Earth and plants while Shagon is powered by any hate felt in his presence and especially that against him, and Khor is an earthbound brute to Hay Lin's graceful flier) but on their roles in their respective groups. Also, the closest they get to a direct counterpart confrontation is Cornelia blasting Shagon during a fight: the Knights only launch quick raids and tend to act by stealth, and during the final battle Nerissa, having just lost half her power, absorbs the powers of her Knights (and in the process she killed Ember and Tridart, who were artificial constructs kept alive by their magic), only for it to backfire horribly when she told Shagon she'd also kill him and Khor and Shagon wounded her right before the Guardians swarmed and killed her.
  • Much later we're introduced to the Runic Wizards, enemies of Kandrakar who have at their service five counterparts to the Guardians, only males and with what appear to be dark counterparts to their powers. Again there's never a direct confrontation, as the Runics are shelved immediately after their debut.
• In one of the X Men First Class issues, the random kids in the coffee shop who correctly guess the team's orders before they're made (and just-so-happen to resemble the team greatly) turn out to be Skrull imposters that have been masquerading as the X-Men and causing havoc.
• The Dark X-Men feature: Dark Beast (Beast), Mimic (Angel, Cyclops; he has the powers of the original five), Daken (Wolverine), Mystique (Jean Grey). When Emma Frost was a member, she was the counterpart of Professor X, as both a psychic and a teacher.
• And for all of Osborn's "Dark" teams, it should be noted that those were just the titles of the books. Osborn was a Villain with Good Publicity and the public (and most any individual member you're surprised to see on these lists) thought they were truly there to do good. All this is in the aftermath of Civil War, and Osborn was promoting his teams as the only real Avengers, etc. unlike those outlaws who were operating without the legal right to do so.
• Dark Reign gave us Dark Young Avengers, whose members are the Psycho Rangers to the original Young Avengers.
  • Patriot, the determined leader is met by the doubt-filled, insecure Melter.
  • The gay magician Wiccan's counterpart is the female sorceress Enchantress (a younger Asgardian wannabe who is not the one we know and love from Thor.)
  • The Action Girl Hawkeye II meets the Executioner II, a Psycho for Hire; both are Badass Normals.
  • Stature faces Big Zero, a Badass Bookworm Legacy Character against a Dark Action Girl and racist. Both are size-changers.
  • Vision and Egghead are both robots.
  • The funny Sixth Ranger Speed faces Coat Of Arms, a crazy fangirl.
  • For unknown reasons, Hulkling doesn't have a counterpart in the other team. The Dark Young Avengers are somewhat unusual, because the Dark Young Avengers were not gathered together to fight the original Young Avengers, but just want to be heroes. However, they will probably end up under Osborn's control. What's more, some relationships between the members of the Dark Young Avengers mirror those in the Young Avengers. Just like Stature and Vision love each other, Big Zero has a crush on Egghead.
• In the Heroes Reborn (2021) take on Dark Reign, Goblin's attempt to take over the US is presented as a bizarre Joker-style caper, but he still has a Dark Squadron by his side: The Sentry for Hyperion, Valkyrie for Power Princess, Moon Knight for Nighthawk, Nova for Dr Spectrum and Ghost Runner for the Blur.

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