The only thing worse than the female counterpart to a superhero is the evil counterpart to a superhero. Not as damaging, but surely as lazy, and definitely something we're sick to the back teeth of seeing. Or as Bizarro, the backwards Superman doppelganger might put it, we am love when writers can't come up with more bad guys so just make a bad version of hero! That is our favourite thing! It definitely doesn't smack of a total lack of ideas! Nope! Sometimes there are characters who break out of this ghetto - Venom's twisted take on Spider-Man comes to mind - in general, these half-hearted villains are barely good for a one-off story, let alone as an ongoing threat. Whether they're robots, clones, or versions from an alternate reality, the mirror image of superheroism is one we have long grown tired of glimpsing.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
