8 DC Characters Shamelessly Ripped-Off From Marvel

6. Guardian Is Another Patriot With A Shield

Guardian DC Comics
DC Comics

Captain America is far and away the most important and iconic hero of the Second World War. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941 for Timely Comics, Steve Rogers would develop into a pivotal figure in the Marvel Universe, and an icon of the genre more generally too.

Things could've been different though. Just a year after Cap made had made his first attempt at punching Hitler, Simon and Kirby had left for National Comics (later to be named DC Comics). With their arrival came the creation of Guardian, a blatant analogue to their original Cap concept.

Going by the name Jim Harper, Guardian was a police officer by day and a vigilante by night, pursuing the criminals that the long arm of the law had failed to apprehend. He rode around in something called the Whiz Wagon, and commanded the respect of The Newsboy Legion, both concepts that somehow failed to usurp the Quinjet and the Avengers in terms of popularity, somewhat bizarrely.

Guardian has since gone on to appear in a whole host of comics, TV series and more, with different characters under the mantle. He might pale in comparison to the star-spangled man with a plan, but - as far as rip-offs go - he's a pretty innocuous one.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.