Superman analogues are prevalent no matter where you look in the medium, but perhaps one of the more successful has been Gladiator.
Leader of the Shi'ar Empire's Imperial Guard, Gladiator is empowered with all the abilities from the Man of Steel's arsenal and more, with the alien even capable of shattering entire planets given the right motivation. He's prone to the odd lapse in confidence, but otherwise you'd struggle to find a stronger figure in the Shi'ar than him.
So, how did the Shi'ar's most powerful asset come to fight Earth's most fearsome rage monster? Well the battle went down in the 1997 Incredible Hulk Annual, and saw Gladiator come to Earth to apprehend a shapeshifter who had supposedly taken the form of Bruce Banner's son. This inevitably leads to a throwdown between the pair, and it doesn't disappoint.
Gladiator actually gets the upper-hand a brief while, lifting the Hulk out of Earth's atmosphere to take him out of commission permanently. Hulk replies with a trademark thunderclap, which brings them both hurtling back down to the nuclear reactor the fight started in. The strongest there is then launches Gladiator into the reactor, and then proceeds to pummel him until his supposed child snaps him out of it.
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.
