8 DC Characters Shamelessly Ripped-Off From Marvel

4. Rocket Red Was DC's Answer To Iron Man

Although comparisons between Rocket Red and Iron Man aren't all that prevalent, owing to the fact that, y'know, the Rockets derive from the USSR, there's a lot visually and politically to connect the pair.

Introduced in 1987 by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton, the Rockets formed a part of the Rocket Red Brigade, a Russian defence force outfitted with a state of the art battlesuit not all that dissimilar to Iron Man's own. They featured intermittently over the years, appearing primarily in Justice League, but they didn't catch on as much as DC would've perhaps hoped.

Undoubtedly the most interesting thing about the group, however, is their political dynamic. Formerly a part of the USSR, the Brigade fracture and diverge on different paths, ideologically disparate and irreconcilably opposed to the other. Given the original Iron Man was created within that Cold War context, the focus of the group's political debate is very interesting, and no doubt a tacit allusion to that very dynamic.

Rocket Red will never manage to compete with Iron Man in terms of popularity, but as far as armoured heroes go, he's certainly not the worst.