9 Marvel Heroes Embarrassingly Similar To DC Characters
8. The Flash & Quicksilver
We got our first fleeting glimpse of Marvel's Quicksilver in last year's X-Men: Days of Future Past, while more recently, Pietro streaked across the silver screen in Avengers: The Age of Ultron. But in between these two movies, DC rushed its own high-velocity hero into fans' homes via the CW's immediately popular Flash series. So which character came first in the comics? The Flash is the original Scarlet Speedster, bursting on the scene in 1956, in DC's Showcase Comics, and ushering in the comic book superhero renaissance known as the Silver Age. Quicksilver sped into pop culture in 1964, in X-Men #4, then quickly joined the Avengers (in issue #16, 1965). But the winner in the originality race is actually Jay Garrick, the Golden-Age Flash (1940), who beat everyone, including DC's other running feature Johnny Quick. Jay wore a winged, saucer-shaped helmet like - *cough* - Mercury, Greek and Roman Mythology's super-fast Messenger of the Gods.
Tom English is an environmental chemist who loves reading comics, watching movies, and writing stories both weird and wonderful. His fiction has appeared in several print anthologies, including CHALLENGER UNBOUND (KnightWatch Press, 2015), GASLIGHT ARCANUM: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes (Edge SF and Fantasy) and DEAD SOULS (Morrigan Books). Tom also edited the mammoth BOUND FOR EVIL: Curious Tales of Books Gone Bad, which was a 2008 Shirley Jackson Award finalist for best anthology. Among his non-fiction books is DIET FOR DREAMERS, a collection of inspirational stories featuring everything from Stan Lee to Sherlock Holmes to Slinky Toys. Tom resides with his wife, Wilma, surrounded by books and beasts, deep in the woods of New Kent, Virginia.