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The Convoluted Lineage of Gladiator

Superman analogues teem in superhero comics. One might say that the industry had begun to sell books about substitute Supermen with the beginning of Captain Marvel's tenure in the late Fawcett Comics. But so many of them have nested in various publishing companies and franchises that these characters in general do not evoke controversy.

Between Supreme, Hyperion, and the swarms of Supermanlike characters available in self-consciously derivative pieces like Big Bang Comics, enough duplicate Supermen exist to repopulate Krypton.

One character, however, thoroughly distinguishes himself by owing to Superman indirectly through no less than three generations of characters - owing, in fact, to two separate versions of Superman, if one would count that seminal character at various stages of life.

From the pages of X-Men came the derivative superhero Gladiator, who could count Superman not directly as his template, but only as the first generation in a third-copy process of imitation.

Origins

To readers without a grounding in works that had appeared before, Gladiator might have appeared within the pages of X-Men as something from nothing. However, in context, his origins become more obvious. He appeared as a member of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, a body of superheroes who bore remarkable similarities to the Legion of Super-Heroes.

He first appeared in X-Men not too long since David Cockrum and Len Wein revived that dormant franchise, in the late issues of Cockrum's first run as an artist and character designer. This, by itself, pointed to the nature of Gladiator and other members of the Guard, to one who chose to examine Cockrum's resume.

His work on X-Men probably represented the greatest piece of comics market share a Cockrum book would achieve. However, before his unquestionable success on what would become Marvel's premiere franchise - X-books certainly outsell Fantastic Four or Amazing Spider-Man these days, regardless of how matters stood in 1961, 1966, or 1971 - David Cockrum's work as a costume stylist and comics artist came to the attention of fans not long before.

Cockrum had done some time across the aisle at DC Comics, where his revamp of the Legion of Super-Heroes had redefined those characters in a way that pulled them kicking and screaming out of 1959 and into the post-Marvel seventies. Thus, that Cockrum had worked on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes clearly points back to the derivative nature of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard as a kind of self-referent in-joke about his earlier triumphs.

Given Gladiator's powers, he could only correspond to one of two Legionnaires. Superboy had a similar degree of firepower, as did Mon-El. Since the Imperial Guard did not seem to contain an immensely powerful time-traveling superhero, we can reasonably assume that Gladiator made reference primarily to Mon-El; his color scheme implies Mon-El more than Superboy, and his ludicrous haircut seems like some kind of joke about Mon-El's rather conservative hairstyle.

So we trace Gladiator back to Mon-El. We could call Mon-El father to Gladiator, at least in a derivative sense.

The Mon-El Doppelganger

However, once we trace Gladiator to Mon-El, we begin to recognize the recursive nature of his derivation. Mon-El himself owed to another superhero himself, as one might note from his first appearance in 1961 in a Superboy story.

Mon-El first appeared in a typically DC Silver Age tale as an amnesiac superhero whose powers suggested a kinship to Superboy, and the adventures that followed involved a number of attempts by Superboy to verify or discredit the newcomer's identity. His similarities to Superboy made Mon-El something of a double for Superboy.

By the end of the story, however, Superboy's wit managed to verify that Mon-El did not, indeed, derive from the House of El on Krypton. Superboy tested Mon-El by presenting some counterfeit Kryptonite in the form of lumps of lead painted fluorescent green. When Mon-El keeled over, writhing in pain, Superboy assumed fraud, since nothing in his phony Kryptonite could harm a bona fide Kryptonian.

As a twist ending, however, Mon-El revealed his true past. The shock of his exposure returned his memory, forcing him to recall his origins as a native of the planet Daxam, whose inhabitants enjoyed similar powers to those of Kryptonians, but who suffered death if exposed too long to the radiations of the element lead.

A regretful Superboy, seeing that death awaited the poisoned Mon-El, prolonged that poorly-treated stalwart's life by projecting him into the Phantom Zone, where he would wait for a thousand years until members of the Legion of Super-Heroes could formulate a cure for his lead poisoning.

So, as a duplicate of Mon-El, Gladiator owed to Superboy as a template, since Mon-El himself represented a duplicate Superboy, even if the original story mainly intended him as a throwaway character that only later would find a place in the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Superboy Doppelganger

By connection to Mon-El, Gladiator can claim Superboy as a grandparent. This already distinguishes him as a study in iterative character recycling. One would think a role as a duplicate of a duplicate of a character would satisfy any character.

However, it gets more complicated at this point. For, though Mon-El clearly owed to Superboy in his fundamental design, Mon-El himself owed to yet another superhero.

In the story of Mon-El's appearance to Superboy, we see a recycled tale from an earlier original. If Mon-El played the role of Superboy's purported brother, the drama he acted out echoed neatly the tragedy of Superman's Older Brother.

So, stepping back to 1953, we investigate an obscure Superman footnote, the throwaway character Halk Kar.

The Halk Kar Doppelganger

Step back to 1953, back before Curt Swan had penciled his first Superman comic. Perhaps even Wayne Boring had yet to become a tenured artist in the Superman franchise.

To visualize Halk Kar in this one-shot tale, take the Plastino and Boring interpretation of Superman, with the lantern jaw and the barrel chest. Strip him of insignia, and give him a brown burr instead of Superman's wavy blue hair. Then recolor the basic Superman costume magenta instead of blue, perhaps with a thoroughly clashing orange cape.

Already, perhaps, you begin to frame the word "goober." But do not base such judgment on Halk Kar's fashion sense. Not out of mercy, however, should you defer such criticism - no, instead, out of its redundancy. For Halk Kar would establish by deeds rather than fashion sense his fundamental gooberishness.

Halk Kar appeared on earth in a typically fifties rocketship, bearing a star map with the alarming legend "Route for my son to take to earth" written in Kryptonese - in the very script of Jor-El, Superman's biological father. Given such documentary evidence, one can see how Superman would conclude that fate had delivered him an elder brother in the person of Halk Kar, in spite of that hero's inability to recall any such origins.

However, in deed after deed, Halk Kar failed to show himself a peer of Superman. He could fly, but not fast enough; he could lift great weights, but not great enough; and he failed to keep up with his purported brother Superman in almost any test. In this, we see more humor than in the Mon-El story, since Mon-El did not fail Superboy's tests (until the lead rock episode). However, Superman himself found no particular joy in having to cope with the ineptitude of a sibling.

In one last dramatic failure, however, Halk Kar revealed the truth. A blow to the head or similar physical trauma that Superman wouldn't even have shrugged at restored his memory, and Halk Kar recalled his true origins as a lost traveler from the planet Thoron, a world similar to, but smaller than, Krypton, and which revolved around a slightly more orange sun. Thoron's environment therefore invested Halk Kar with only a portion of Superman's abilities. While stranded on Krypton in his travels, Halk Kar had the unlikely good fortune of meeting the scientist Jor-El (whose DNA Superman carries); and Jor-El gave him a spare star map on which he had plotted the route by which he intended to send his infant son Kal-El to earth. Therefore all the pieces came together; Halk Kar stood somewhat redeemed in his failure to keep up to Kryptonian standards; and his returned memories gave him the pretext to leave earth and return to Thoron.

Some observers, noting that the Mon-El story owed so much to the sad tale of Superman's Older Brother, characterize him as "the Mon-El of Earth-2."

This, of course, points to Halk Kar as a conceptual grandparent to Gladiator - for a duplicate of Mon-El belonged the status of a duplicate of a duplicate of Halk Kar.

The Superman Doppelganger

Even with Gladiator's lineage thus far discussed - derivative of Mon-El, and, as such, grandson of both Superboy and of Halk Kar - we do not come completely to the end of his heritage as a character based on another.

For, if we had to define Halk Kar himself, we might come to this description: "Superman, but in an ugly costume, and with a bad haircut, and amnesia, and with a tendency to mess up a lot."

The idea of Gladiator owes twice to the house of El: Once, as a grandchild concept to Superboy and once as a great-grandchild concept to Superman himself.

Exercises in Conspicuous Derivation

Some might credit Supreme with the title "Most Conspicuously Derivative Superman Duplicate," not because his self-titled comic fails to read well, but because of the relentlessly second-hand nature of both his own design and that of the environment in which he moves. With some justice, we could inventory the number of ways in which Supreme evokes Weisinger-era Superman stories, and probably run out of time or paper before recording them all.

However, I would propose Gladiator as a serious contender, not because his design makes this as obvious as Supreme - it would take a great deal of work to make a character more Superman-like than Supreme, since sometimes Supreme seems more Superman-like than Superman. Nonetheless, that this character owes to Superman twice, and owes again once to a Superman copy and once again to a Superboy copy puts him in his own league.

The only way I could convolute his relationships to various source characters would involve feeding back from him to the originals, but saner minds at DC would correctly flinch at the notion of giving Superman that haircut.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

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