Expy/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

* [[Marvel Comics]]' Donyell Taylor, originally codenamed Bandit, is an Expy of Marvel's own Gambit, a fact exploited shamelessly by an issue of Gambit's eponymous series when Bandit turns out to be romantically involved with Gambit's ex-wife Belladonna.

** Bandit was introduced in ''[[New Warriors]]''... which had the character Chord, who has a similar role and persona to Cable (though a completely different origin) and [[Older Than They Think|actually predates Cable's first appearance by almost a year]]. Then there's Wyre, from late [[Alpha Flight]], who actually has wire-related powers (metallic [[Prehensile Hair]]... on his chest).

* Lee, the main character of [[Peter David]]'s ''[[Fallen Angel (comics)|Fallen Angel]]'' is an Expy of Linda Danvers, protagonist of David's previous run on ''[[Supergirl]]''. In fact, David did his best to fuel speculation that the characters were one and the same until the book's second volume, in which he chronicled Lee's origins. Later on, he introduced Lin, yet another expy of Linda Danvers, who can in fact be considered Linda in everything but name. Likewise, the God figure in the series is a small girl dressed in a tennis motif and carrying a tennis racket, which makes her an expy of Wally, the god figure in David's ''[[Supergirl]]'' who was a young boy who carried a baseball bat.

* [[John Byrne]]'s college newspaper strip ''Gay Guy!'' had a villain called [http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/charisma.htm Charisma], whom no man could resist except... well, guess. Byrne liked the character concept so much that [http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/karisma.htm Karisma] showed up on the [[Fantastic Four]]'s doorstep a decade and a half later.

** There's also Onyxx and Rockslide, two X-Men who have roughly the same powers (being giant rock men) and only a few strong physical differences (different colors, Onyxx has a helmet and is slightly bulkier, slightly different costumes). It's to the point that, seeing them on the same page, you could think one was an artist/colorist error meant to represent the other. This is lampshaded a few times when they're shown to be casual acquaintences who think highly of one another.

*** Both happen to also look like a [[Palette Swap]] of [[Fantastic Four|The Thing]], who almost certainly inspired their creation. The only difference power-wise is that Rockslide can [[Rocket Punch|fire off body parts]]; Onyxx and the Thing can't.

*** Kieron Gillen [[Word of God|has said]] (on ''[[House to Astonish]]'') that Teon from ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|Generation Hope]]'' is a character from his ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' comic reinvented as a superhero.

** Credit for this actually goes to the artist, John Cassaday. According to [[Word of God|Ellis]], he only told Cassaday to draw Jack Carter with a shaved head and tattoos, and it was Cassaday who decided to draw him *exactly* like Spider Jerusalem. This makes Carter one of the rare Expies created as a prank.

* [[Archie Comics|Archie]] was a smash hit for [[Archie Comics]], and inspired many Expies:

** ''Fast Willie Jackson'' was an African-American Archie Expy from Fitzgerald Publishing.

** Atlas/Seaboard comics published ''Vicki'' circa 1975... a feature that itself consisted of slightly-updated reprints of ''another'' Archie expy, ''Tippy Teen'', which had been published by Tower Comics in the '60s.

* When [[Alan Moore]] began work on ''[[Watchmen]]'', the plan was to use all of the characters DC purchased from [[Charlton Comics]], but editors ultimately put the kibosh on that, so he had to create new ones. In a great sense of cyclical cosmic irony, [[The Question]] was a little known C-Stringer who inspired Moore's Rorschach, who then in turn inspired [[Justice League|JLU's]] version of The Question, which worked so well it turned him into a major player again.

** Similarly, ''[[Final Crisis]]: Superman Beyond 3D'' features Captain Adam, an alternate universe version of [[Captain Atom]] who's a clear Expy of Dr Manhattan, ''Watchmen'''s [[Captain Atom]] Expy.

****** And Silk Spectre II is mean to be Nightshade.

* One story in ''[[The Maze Agency]]'' featured a detectived named Senor Lobo, whom writer Mike Barr has acknowledged was a deliberate homage to [[Hercule Poirot]].

* ''[[Queen and Country]]'' is, as writer Greg Rucka fully acknowledges, heavily influenced by ''[[The Sandbaggers]]''. Not every character is an Expy, but Paul Crocker and Tom Wallace are especially obvious as expies of Neil Burnside and Willie Caine, respectively.

* In a probably deliberate example, since the character is a Redeeming Replacement for on of [[Spider-Man|Spider-Man's]] worst enemies, but Phil Urich the heroic Green Goblin suggests an expy of Peter Parker. Ulrich is an [[Unlucky Everydude]] who works for the Daily Bugle and even has an Uncle Ben just like Peter (although Urich's doesn't get killed). In the ''[[Spider Girl]]'' series, the two characters are close friends.

* DC's ''[[All-Star Squadron]]'' featured the Young All-Stars, who were meant to replace the [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] versions of Superman (Iron Munro), Wonder Woman (The Fury), Batman (Flying Fox), Aquaman (Neptune Perkins, Tsunami), and Green Arrow (Tigress) Post-Crisis, because they, you know, weren't active back then anymore. They had Nazi-created evil counterparts called Axis Amerika to contend with, which were ''also'' retrofitted Expies of the vanished Earth-2 heroes: Ubermensch (Superman), Gudra the Valkyrie (Wonder Woman), Grösshorn Eule and Fledermaus (Batman and Robin), Usil (Green Arrow) and Sea Wolf (Aquaman). Part of the reasoning was that, metaphysically speaking, iconic characters like Superman and Wonder Woman were "too big" to be replaced by just ''one'' new (and inevitably "lesser") character. The [[Token Minority|Token Japanese]] member of Axis Amerika, Kamikaze was an expy of Fawcett's [[Bulletman]].

* Marvin, a supporting character for ''[[Millie the Model]]'', had much the same characterization as [[Archie Comics]]' Jughead.

* Maximum Press characters Law and Order bear a strong resemblance to Marvel's [[Cloak and Dagger (comics)|Cloak and Dagger]].

* Happened all the way back during the creation of the [[X-Men]] by [[Stan Lee|Stan "The Man" Lee himself]]. When creating the original team of five, Lee decided he wanted to re-use the character of [[Fantastic Four|the Human Torch]], but with ice powers instead of fire.

* In the ''[[Catwoman (comics)|Catwoman]]'' story "Selina's Big Score", Stark is a blatant Expy of Parker, [[Villain Protagonist]] of a series of crime novels by Richard Stark. He also [[Comic Book Fantasy Casting|looks like]] Lee Marvin, who played Parker (renamed Walker) in the film adaptation of the first novel, ''[[Point Blank (film)|Point Blank]]''. (Darwyn Cooke, who wrote and drew the story, later went on to officially adapt the Parker novels to the comic medium.)

** In a further case of literary expiness, The Chameleon was revealed as Kraven's illegtimate brother, and was given the name Dmitri Smerdyakov- taken from two of the siblings of ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'', and like Smerdyakov of the novel, Chameleon is [[Bastard Bastard|illegitimate]] and a [[Manipulative Bastard]].

* Witchfire from ''[[Alpha Flight]]'' is a terribly obvious example, ripping off the concept of the ''[[New Mutants]]'' character Magik (except that she's the actual daughter of Belasco), as well as aspects of DC's Raven. It's hard to tell which character she's directly ripping off more, but it's clear that writer James Hudnall just wanted to write those characters, but wasn't allowed to at the time.