Superhero Expies with a twist

Do these go far enough to distinguish the character?

Essentially the Paragons are the setting’s equivalent of the Avengers or the Justice League, except officially backed by the United Nations.

The Emissary: A female Superman Substitute who was sent to Earth as an ambassador by Starfish Aliens who grew her artificially from modified human DNA. Her most common weakness is that a strong enough electrical attack can still effect her nervous system.

Miss Raven: Batman. Apart from the obvious differences her parents are still alive, and she initially became a vigilante to bring her corrupt father to justice. Also, throws various types of feather-shaped darts instead of Batarangs.

Doc Mach: The Flash except more serious. The group’s scientist, and skeptical of magic (which he rationalizes with Clarke’s Third Law).

Sentinel: Initially built up as an Expy of Iron Man, but eventually revealed to be a ten-year-old boy with instinctive understanding of and control over technology, with the “suits” actually being telepathically controlled drones.

Druid: Doctor Strange. Earth’s current Archmage, responsible for defending it against magical threats.

Captain Cosmic: A mashup of Green Lantern (origin-wise) and various Toku heroes, powered by Adaptive Armor built by the Lawkeeper, an alien AI with godlike power. His powers include strength, speed, Sizeshifting, intangibility and invulnerability, with his main restrictions being the suit only having so much allocatable energy at any given time, and only responding (due to being adapted for human use) to verbal commands.

The Jovian Justicar: Martian Manhunter, except her “true” form, up to and including presenting as female, is A Form You Are Comfortable With. Extreme temperatures mess with her shapeshifting (cold limiting how much she can reduce her density for example).

Titania: A very loose Expy of Wonder Woman, and it was initially unintentional. A queen of the Fair Folk who came to Earth for fun and has plant control and illusion powers on top of being a Flying Brick. Can’t lie or break her word.

What I was told about expies is what makes the character your creation is based on unique? Take one of those traits and twist it. Watchmen does a phenomenal job with it in contrast to other DC characters especially Rorschach.

Definitely rename Miss Raven, since there's already a DC hero called Raven. "Jovian Justicar" is kind of a mouthful too, imho.

Edited by ThriceCharming on Sep 11th 2020 at 10:12:46 AM

To me, most of them seem pretty good: Their powers or personalities differentiate them enough from the originals to stand out. The two (There's three, actually; apparently I can't count) to really work on, though, are Miss Raven, Emissary, and Druid.

• Druid doesn't seem significantly different from Dr. Strange, like at all. You could give him a more distinct magic system, or alternatively (and, in my opinion, more interestingly) you could try and veer away from Dr. Strange's personality: instead of being aloof and academic and pretentious like every wizard ever, you could make him a trickster character, or a down-to-earth no-nonsense type (try not to be too much like John Constantine, though), or have him be Book Dumb/use Buffy Speak, or really gregarious and extraverted. He could even be more of a comic-relief/Beware the Silly Ones character if you want, though he doesn't have to be.

• Miss Raven also needs significant differentiation to distinguish her from Batman. Some things that occur to me are: you could make her less stoic/deemphasize the "I work alone" aspect, or you could change her skillset, either emphasizing the fighting and de-emphasizing the detective work and Batman Gambits, making her more of a straight-up martial-artist superhero, or the other way around, making her a weak physical fighter but a master of psychology and detective work. I'd lean towards the second one based on her backstory, but that's just me. Whichever way you go, you might want to add some other skill to compensate. Also might want to explain where she got all the gadgets, assuming she has gadgets like Batman does.

• And finally, Emissary. She should get some more interesting powers than just the standard Superman-Expie, and you definitely want to play into the whole raised-by-aliens-for-the-express-purpose-of-being-a-diplomat thing. You should also try to differentiate her from the Jovian Justicar a bit: while both come from alien cultures very different from our own, they should have unique personalities so their arcs don't feel redundant.

Sorry for the really long post: I tried to break it up a bit with bullet points, but it still feels too long.

Edit: It occurs to me that you don't have to actually remove Miss Raven's combat skills - just put more emphasis on the whole psychology/"know your enemy" aspect of how she actually fights. Too often, we see Batman using his physical abilities in combat but not his mental ones: you can have Miss Raven use both in tandem, and the audience will see her as a different sort of character.

Edited by aPod-ofSeals on Mar 19th 2021 at 10:19:57 AM