Holy Carbon Copies, Batman!
January 5, 2010 10:59 AM   Subscribe

I am looking for examples of comic book characters with with the ability to create duplicates of themselves...

The two examples I have so far are Luminous from the DC Animated Universe and Jamie Madrox (aka The Multiple Man) from the X-Men. I'm sure others exist, but I have sadly been out of the loop on comics for more than a decade now.
posted by Irontom to Media & Arts (27 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Dupli-Kate from Invincible and Triplicate Girl from the Legion of Super Heroes both qualify.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 11:08 AM on January 5, 2010


Dupli-Kate and Multi-Paul from Invincible. God, why do I know that?
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:09 AM on January 5, 2010




In the most recent Amazing Spider-Man arc, Spidey arch-enemy The Sandman has this (new) ability, though the duplicates he creates aren't exact copies.

Yes, I am in my 40s and I still read Spider-Man comics. STFU.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:11 AM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Do you want heroes who specific power is to duplicate themselves or will heroes capable of doing it for other reasons also suffice?

Swamp Thing and Dr.Manhattan have both done it as just part of their nature.
Animal Man was able to do it once by duplicating the powers of bacteria.
posted by cimbrog at 11:11 AM on January 5, 2010


Multiplex, Firestorm's most frequent nemesis. Where Firestorm is a product of nuclear fusion (fusing Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein into the singular entity Firestorm), Multiplex is a product of nuclear fission and has the ability to split himself into duploids.
posted by Lokheed at 11:13 AM on January 5, 2010


Response by poster: cimbrog - I'd be happy with examples from both cases.
posted by Irontom at 11:14 AM on January 5, 2010


Ditto a member of Gen-14 (Image comic).

Molecule Man (Marvel) was just shown making duplicates of other characters in Dark Avengers. So, there is no reason that he couldn't make dupes of himself.

A future version of Beast Boy (DC) had the ability to turn into multiple animals.
posted by wellsaid at 11:27 AM on January 5, 2010


I forgot Triplicate Girl.
posted by wellsaid at 11:31 AM on January 5, 2010


Angela Spica, aka The Engineer, from Warren Ellis's The Authority.

Spica engineers a massive load of nanobots into nine pints of liquid machinery, and replaces her blood with it. She realizes after some time that she can create duplicates of herself using this nanotechnology. She uses this ability for predictable purposes, such as repelling alien invasions, evacuating innocent citizens from disaster areas, and threesomes.
posted by gettingpaidforthis at 11:39 AM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Manga? In the series "Gakuen Alice" there's a girl who has the ability to divide into two.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:44 AM on January 5, 2010


While not perfect copies, both Iron Man and Thor have had their powers replicated in other people, the former in War Machine (and the Iron Patriot) and the latter in Beta Ray Bill. This has lead to a few mirror matches over the years.

Tony Stark has also created Iron Avengers (robot versions of the Avengers) in a few comics (Earth X, etc).

Superman has been creating robot copies of himself to stymie Lois Lane since the Silver Age.

Villains (and some heroes) will go through different iterations over the years leading to multiple people with the same powersets like Flash (Allen, West, etc) and Green Lantern (Jordan, Rayner, Stewart, etc).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:52 AM on January 5, 2010


If you don't mind manga, Naruto is a pretty obvious example. His clones aren't permanent, but they are tangible copies of himself.
posted by ashirys at 12:12 PM on January 5, 2010


Ah, how could I forget Dr. Doom and his endless army of Doombots?

I'd say that roughly 95% of the time that Doom has been beaten in a comic book, it turned out to actually have been one of his Doombots.
posted by gettingpaidforthis at 12:31 PM on January 5, 2010


Silver age Green Lantern used to do this shit all the time (so that his girlfriend wouldn't find out he was Green Lantern because he wanted to woo her as Hal for some goddamned retarded reason), and the Flash did so by moving so fast that he was effectively in more than one place at once.
posted by klangklangston at 12:48 PM on January 5, 2010


Flashback, a villian from Alpha Flight.

I think one of Ben 10's forms can do this?
posted by GJSchaller at 1:03 PM on January 5, 2010


As far as Ben 10 goes, you're probably thinking of Echo Echo
posted by Karmakaze at 1:05 PM on January 5, 2010


Quicksilver was able to sorta-do this for awhile; he was actually grabbing future versions of himself and pulling them into the present.

Also, Multi-Woman from Alan Moore's Top Ten.
posted by Target Practice at 1:12 PM on January 5, 2010


Silent Majority from the DC villain group Force of July, which I'm kind of ashamed of knowing.
posted by Shepherd at 1:16 PM on January 5, 2010


Do crossovers from other media count? The Heroes wiki lists four characters with some variation of this ability. Of those four, three (Evan, Julien, Eli) have appeared in the online graphic novels. Only Eli has appeared on the show itself.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:04 PM on January 5, 2010


Another manga: Kaede in Mahou Sensei Negima can make multiple copies of herself. (She's a better ninja than Naruto and would make mincemeat of him.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:00 PM on January 5, 2010


Calvin, with his revamped Transmogrifier!!!

I know that probably isn't exactly what you meant, but damn that's an awesome story line.
posted by nosila at 3:28 PM on January 5, 2010


It's not really the same as a duplication power, but various agents of SHIELD over the years in Marvel continuity have made good use of the Life Model Decoy technology to replace themselves with duplicates.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 4:11 PM on January 5, 2010


I have read approximately one comic book in my life. In it, Batman and Superman fought the Duplicate Man. I am glad that my time was not wasted.
posted by Eater at 4:44 PM on January 5, 2010


Oh, Ben 10 also had Ditto.

There's also Billy Numerous from the Teen Titans cartoon.
posted by Karmakaze at 5:49 PM on January 5, 2010


I can think of a couple of more examples from manga. Two of the main characters from Oh My Goddess!, Belldandy and Urd, can create or split themselves into multiple, smaller scale, duplicates, but after a certain number the duplicates start to become distorted looking (for Urd, at least).

An example from a horror series would be the title character of Tomie, who possesses regenerative powers that allow her to duplicate herself (as well as result in all sorts of full-on body horror fun times). From wikipedia:

When her body scattered into pieces, each fragment of her body is capable of regenerating into a complete and independent body. When her body is burnt to ash, the ash floats in air with life of its own. It is also shown that even if Tomie's body isn't injured, her body will attempt to sprout another Tomie through budding, a process usually begun if Tomie is emotionally stressed.
posted by kosher_jenny at 9:00 PM on January 5, 2010


Also Quantum. (Full disclosure - I got the last couple by posting on a superhero rpg forum.)
posted by Karmakaze at 5:28 AM on January 6, 2010


« Older What is the best email "drip" marketing service?   |   Is this friendship worth saving? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.