Power Man (SuperMan/Capt Marval wannabe)

[Law Dog]

And let us not turn a blind eye towards what is hommage, what is parody, what is iconic and what is a little too close for comfort.

Frankly, I'm surprised that there wasn't a bigger stink about Squadron Surpreme, especially the extended roster. Even going as far to put out the New World Order one shot after the JLA made their big comback. It's one thing when the characters are closer to parody and are going to only have a single appearance, such as the obvious evil versions of the Avengers that acted as villains in an issue of the Authority (which of course has two iconics of the Upstanding flying brick and the ruthless, shadowy martial artist). I felt that Squadron Supreme may have crossed some of the lines. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Moore's hommage to Superman and the JSA in the pages of Supreme and didn't feel it crossed the line because the stories that were being told involved character types that DC no longer published. The typing in the cast of SS was actively being used.

I think that Punisher is a bit too close to Mack Bolan, albeit infinitely better written by Garth Ennis, except of course for Doug's book.

The Fantastic Four brings to mind Danger Unlimited. It passes my test for being hommage.

And of course, there is times that actual parallel development occur. What I really got a kick out of was a little movie made for HBO called Earth vs the Spider. Not the original with the giant tarantula (although it's a fun movie), this one involved a comic book geek who got spiderpowers to emulate his comic hero. This baby was in the can at least a year before Spider-Man hit the silver screen, but some of the concepts from Spider-Man were thre in EvtS. We had the organic webs (though these came from the navel), we had the sickness right arter the point of infection, we had genetic engineered spiders, ect. I did like one of the guys powers from EvtS that Peter didn't have. He was incredibly sensitive to vibration. It almost gave him a primitive N-Ray vision versus structures he was touching. Nobody is going to accuse Ted Rami of ripping off EvtS, but definitely parallels exist between the movies because they are logical extropolations of what would happen if somebody inherited spider powers.

[Just A Guy Name]

Supreme; Regarding Gladiator , try amazon.com. I just checked and they have it listed in both hard and paperback. I would recommend it to any fan of superheroic fiction. If you do read it, compare it to those early Superman stories from Action, and see how strong you think the similarities are.