20 Comic Characters That Are Total Rip-Offs‏

3. Batman

We all know the story, but let's just go over the basics. It'll make sense, promise. Bruce Wayne is a billionaire industrialist who moonlights as Batman, a crime fighting vigilante who makes up for his lack of superpowers by honing both his body and mind, and pouring tons of his money into creating high-tech gadgets.

He relies as much on these skills and doo-dads as he does on his status as a legendary figure within the criminal world, adopting the image of a bat to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, and helping him conceal his secret identity.

Totally a rip-off of: The Shadow

The creation of Batman is pretty messy, taking inspiration from any number of popular pulp heroes of the era. One particular (anti-)hero provided more inspiration than the others, however. Appearing in numerous forms over numerous decades, Ken Allard is a vigilante who conceals his identity by acting as a rich socialite during the daytime, then adopting the mantle of The Shadow at night when he goes to fight crime in New York.

Gotham City's the DC analogue of New York, Bruce Wayne and Ken Allard are pretty similar in their day-to-day activities (and the degree to which their "alter ego" seems more like a costume than their actual costumes), and both characters use their reputation to strike fear in the hearts of evil men, along with a cavalcade of gadgets, intelligence and martial arts skills.

The characters met in a team-up during the seventies and the Dark Knight acknowledged the influence in-universe, which is nice, even if it doesn't quite excuse the total rip-off.