Summary
Also known as the Last Son of Krypton, the Big Blue Boy Scout, or the Man of Steel, chances are, most people know whoSupermanis. The first DC Comics superhero and the most well-known hero of them all, Superman is a name that will forever be entrenched in superhero culture. Because of that, a lot of different things have been tried with the character.
Different power sets, different storylines, and sometimes,other franchises with superhero universes of their own like to have their own version (or subversion) of Superman.Here are five of them, ranked by how powerful they are.
5Homelander
The Only Man In The Sky
The so-called World’s Greatest Superhero, and perhaps the most popular and infamous of the evil Superman characters. With four out of the planned five seasons having aired,The Boysis probably the most popular piece of fiction satirizing superheroes of all time. InThe Boys’universe, most superheroes are nothing more than pathetic, vain, celebrity man-children, withHomelanderbeing the worst of them.
Homelander is potentially the most psychotic and evil Superman character, yet at the same time, he’s one of the least powerful. He has most of the classic traits that make Superman a powerhouse, such as his superhuman strength, laser eyes, and supersonic flight, but Homelander has shown quite a few anti-feats that reveal he is not that powerful, such as being incapacitated by a collapsed tunnel long enough for the main characters to make a clean escape in Season 2. Or in Season 3, when Hughie could shove him to the side whilst on Temp V, and with only a few months of training, Queen Maeve could even make him bleed. Unfortunately, when around the other characters of his archetype, Homelander is far from theGod he sees himself as.
4Brightburn
Mr. “Take The World”
A devil of a child if there ever was one, one viewing ofBrightburnwould make Jonathan and Martha Kent second-guess their decision to raise a powerful spaceship child. Unfortunately for this spaceship child, and for the entire world, Brandon ends up a socially-stunted victim of bullying. This alone could cause many kids with super villain origin stories to grow up darker on their own. What made Brandon worse though, was when he became compelled by the spaceship to “Take the world”.
He interprets this as his go ahead to take the pain inside him and thrust it out onto the world at large in psychotic displays of murder. He kills relatives, commits acts of terrorism and crimes against humanity, and adoptsthe aliasBrightburn, with plans to keep ‘taking the world’, conquering and dominating with brutal force.
Despite how powerful he is, he is still a child, and an erratic one at that. He is incredibly intimidating among the kids of his universe, but when compared to his fellow Superman counterparts, he doesn’t quite hit the mark.
3Ikaris
Icarus Of The Eternals
The resident MCU variant of this list and a member ofthe infamousEternals, a team of higher-level lifeforms responsible for either using their powers to change the course of human history, or choosing not to interfere at all.
ThoughIkariscould be described as another version of the ‘evil Superman’ trope, it would not be entirely accurate to label him as such. Throughout theEternalsfilm, he is shown to be a mostly noble man who wished to do the right thing. He acted as a villain in the final act, with his efforts to ensure the Emergence and kill a teammate to verify what he thought was a noble plan could be carried out, but even then, he sacrificed himself out of guilt for his actions, flying too close to the sun just like his namesake did.
With his golden laser eyes (as opposed to the usual red for characters of this type), his great strength, speed, and flight, and his status as one of the heavy-hitters in a god-like race, Ikaris is right up there with the powerful cinematic Superman counterparts, but he’s not quite as heavy-hitting as a few others.
2Omni-Man
Nolan The Viltrumite
Both the comics and the television series versions ofInvincibleshowcase what would happen if a member of a Superman-like race came down to Earth to help humanity in a different context. Instead of the last son of a dying race being brought up on Earth to be its kind protector,Omni-Manis a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a powerful member of an even more powerful race of brutal conquerors who wish for him to prepare Earth for their Viltrumite takeover in the near future.
Nolan Grayson, aka. Omni-Mandoes not have the laser-eye boost previous entries possess, but his levels of strength far exceed theirs. He is shown destroying an entire civilization in the first season of the show. He is also shown tanking incredibly powerful blast attacks that could decimate leagues of land, as well as being able to no-sell an earth-quaking punch from his son, Invincible, who is powerful in his own right.
One of his first on-screen feats of power shows him single-handedly killing an entire team of Justice League counterparts, proving his might right from the get-go.
1Metro Man
The Fastest Superman Clone Around
The handsome, charming, narcissistic, and very amusing, Brad Pitt-voiced heroof theMegamindworld, and the main character’s main adversary before his disappearance,Metro Manhas every superpower that comes with being a Superman parody, but with added bonuses.
Unlike most other counterparts of the same ilk, Metro Man had speed feats that went far beyond any of them and matched the capabilities of far more powerful comic book variants of the Man of Steel. Metro Man is so fast, he was able to have a drawn out midlife crisis where he contemplated what he wanted to do with himself. He was able to move around, read, and endlessly contemplate and ponder while the whole world was frozen.
If comic book TV shows and movies have taught us anything, it’s that characters who move so fast the world seems frozen from their perspective are among the elite when it comes to speed. Subsequently, Metro Man is among the elite when it comesto Superman’s counterparts, and proves to be head and shoulders above the rest through the sheer potentiality he showcases through such an insane speed feat.
