In late Spring/early Summer 1938, National Comics released Action Comics #1, featuring the first appearance of Superman. Less than a year later, Wonder Comics #1 was released by a rival publisher, Bruns Publications, with its hero, Wonder Man, a clear knockoff of Superman. National sued over copyright infringement and won, but the dam had been burst and from that point forward, there wasn't a single successful superhero that did not inspire a character based on that hit hero. While Superman might have been the most common target for this sort of thing, Batman was not far behind. The Caped Crusader has inspired countless heroes in the years since. Before you feel too bad about Batman being copied by others, though, do note that the Dark Knight was not exactly a paragon of originality himself. Not only did he share a number of traits with the popular pulp fiction character, The Shadow, the story in Detective Comics #27 that introduced Batman was literally a blatant rewrite of a Shadow story.

Since there have been so many Batman-inspired characters in comics over the years, some of them have gone in a strange direction while others have ended up being quite formidable in their own right. There have also been plenty that fall in the standard medium between those two extremes, like Nightman, the Ultraverse's answer for Batman, who even had his own short-lived TV series in the late 1990s! Here, we are going to take a look at 10 examples of bizarre Batman-inspired characters and 10 that could possibly defeat Batman in a fight.

20 CRAZIEST: FIXER

In 2006, Frank Miller announced plans for a new Batman graphic novel where Batman would fight against international enemies in an attempt by Miller to evoke the sort of comic books that were popular in the 1940s where superheroes would outright attack the leaders of these groups, even before the United States entered into World War II.

Eventually, the book was released without Batman as the hero, but rather a substitute called the Fixer, who battles against these enemies in a story that seemed more like a release of Miller's anger and frustrations over the attacks in New York from 2011 more than anything else. It is a very strange comic book.

19 COULD DROP HIM: MIDNIGHTER

In 1997, Warren Ellis relaunched Stormwatch. His initial intent with the series was to make the book more of a traditional superhero series. However, after introducing a group of Justice League stand-ins who had been experimented on by the evil former leader of Stormwatch, the only two surviving members of the group, Midnighter and Apollo, helped form a darker version of Stormwatch known as the Authority.

Midnighter was the Batman stand-in and he had the ability to both recognize people's weaknesses while also being able to tell what people were going to do before they did it, leading to him being practically unbeatable in a fight.

18 CRAZIEST: BLACK FOX

The Marvel Universe works on a sliding time scale, which means that the Fantastic Four no longer debuted in 1961. They simply debuted "about 8-10 years ago." With that sliding time scale, however, that now meant that there was a whole lot time in the Marvel Universe between Captain America going into suspended animation before the end of the second great war and the debut of the Fantastic Four.

In 2000, John Byrne and Roger Stern filled in that "lost" time in Marvel: The Lost Generation, showing the previously unknown heroes of the 1960s, '70s and '80s. One of these "lost" heroes was Black Fox, who was basically Byrne and Stern's riff on how Batman was depicted during the 1960s.

17 COULD DROP HIM: NIGHTHAWK (SQUADRON SUPREME)

In the early 1970s, Marvel and DC did a sneaky crossover that involved Roy Thomas introducing a new supervillain team known as the Squadron Sinister, who were stand-ins for the Justice League, so that the Avengers could effectively fight against the Justice League. The Batman of this group was Nighthawk. However, it later turned out that there was a heroic version of the Squadron Sinister in another dimension called the Squadron Supreme.

The Nighthawk of that world became President and later, when his teammates decided to benevolently take over the world, he led a rebellion against his former comrades and took them down, losing his life in the process. Taking down his entire superhero team? Sure sounds like something Batman would do.

16 CRAZIEST: DARKWING

Invincible was a comic book about a young man who discovered that his father was essentially his world's version of Superman. Now that he was old enough, young Mark Grayson found that he had inherited his father's alien superpowers. Mark became the hero known as Invincible and fought crime along with his father, who was Omni-Man, the most popular hero in the world.

In the seventh issue of the series, we met the Guardians of the Globe, a team based on the Justice League. Darkwing was the Batman of the team. Things took a turn, however, when Omni-Man revealed that he was the point person in an alien invasion of Earth! He wiped out his entire team of heroes in the issue, including Darkwing!

15 COULD DROP HIM: MOON KNIGHT

When Bill Sienkiewicz first started out in his career as a comic book artist, his art style was very reminiscent of Neal Adams, one of the most famous Batman artists of all-time. Sienkiewicz really came into his own when he took over art duties on the Moon Knight feature in the Hulk magazine. This eventually led to him drawing the ongoing series, as well.

Sienkiewicz cheekily drew Moon Knight pushing Batman aside on the cover of Comics Journal. Moon Knight once got special ghost armor to beat up a bunch of ghosts, so he could probably come up with ways to stop Batman, as well.

14 CRAZIEST: NOSFERATA

In 1989, John Byrne relaunched She-Hulk into a new ongoing series called the Sensational She-Hulk. The series was noteworthy because Byrne made it a comedic series with She-Hulk breaking the fourth wall in every issue. Byrne left the series early on in an editorial dispute, but the comedic angle was continued by Byrne's successor, Steve Gerber.

In Sensational She-Hulk #19, Gerber parodied the massive amount of hype that the Tim Burton Batman movie received in 1989 by introducing a brand-new superhero, Nosferata, who hired a publicity manager to promote her debut as a hero. She even had her own version of the Batmobile, known as the Nosterauto.

13 COULD DROP HIM: DARK CLAW

In 1996, the Marvel and DC universes found themselves pitted against each other by two cosmic beings. The miniseries, DC vs. Marvel, let fans vote on a series of match-ups between DC and Marvel comic book characters. After the fights finished, the two universes were then merged together to form a new one known as the Amalgam Universe.

Superheroes from Marvel and DC were mashed up to form new heroes. Batman and Wolverine combined to become Logan Wayne, the superhero known as Dark Claw. Batman having to take on himself would be hard enough, but a Batman who also has the skills of Wolverine? That would be way too tough for the Dark Knight to handle.

12 CRAZIEST: TEK-KNIGHT

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's The Boys was about a special group of CIA operatives who monitor the superhero community and take care of them when they get out of line. There were two Batman analogues in the series. One of them, Black Noir, was central to the overall storyline of the series. The other one, Tek-Knight, was played for dark humor.

He developed a compulsion due to a brain tumor that made it dangerous for anyone to be around him without being accosted. This was shown in increasingly bizarrely hilarious scenarios. The hero actually sent away his sidekick, Laddio (a Robin stand-in) on a year-long "hero's journey" to protect him from what Tek-Knight might do to him.

11 COULD DROP HIM: SHROUD

In the mid-1970s, Marvel debuted a strange new series called Super-Villain Team-Up, which was exactly what it sounds like: team-ups of their most famous villains. Naturally, one of the issues with a series starring supervillains is that there has to be someone for them to fight against. So writer Doug Moench introduced the Shroud, a mix between Batman and the Shadow, who had a vendetta against Doctor Doom.

The Shroud would later move to Los Angeles and go undercover as the head of a crime organization there so that he could take down the world of crime from within. This set-up proved to be a bit too tempting to the Shroud on a few occasions.

10 CRAZIEST: BIG DADDY

In Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s most famous property to date, they introduced us to a young man named Dave Lizewski, who decided to become a costumed vigilante in a world that seemingly did not have any superheroes in it. However, once he began fighting crime, he discovered that there were other costumed heroes out there. The most effective ones were the father and daughter "dynamic duo," Big Daddy and Hit-Girl.

The film adaptation of the comic book made Big Daddy more of a Batman analogue, with the comic leaning closer to the Punisher as the inspiration, but in both mediums, the Batman elements are there, with Hit-Girl being his twisted version of Robin.

9 COULD DROP HIM: NEMESIS

Millar went back to the Batman set-up with Nemesis, a series that he did with artist Steve McNiven. The basic concept of the book was what if Batman acted like the Joker?

Like Batman, Nemesis is a super-rich and highly capable operative. He simply chooses to use his skills for evil rather than for good. He decides to hunt a Washington D.C. police Chief Inspector for sport, tormenting the man and his family just to amuse himself. Thousands of people lost their lives as collatoral damage of this hunt. Nemesis has the resources and the twisted mind to be able to give Batman a real run for his money.

8 CRAZIEST: NIGHT COUNT

During Marvel's Civil War storyline, it was not just the Avengers who broke apart, as Iron Man and Captain America chose sides over the Superhuman Registration Act. Even the Fantastic Four found themselves splitting up over Reed Richards' devotion to Iron Man's side of the debate while Sue Richards and her brother, Johnny Storm, teamed up with Captain America's side.

The Thing could not decide what to do so he just left the country entirely, moving to Paris for the duration of the Civil War crossover. While there, the Thing met the superheroes of Paris, who were all slightly offbeat versions of DC Comics characters, like the Batman stand-in, the Night Count.

7 COULD DROP HIM: NIGHTHAWK (SUPREME POWER)

In 2003, Marvel released a new version of the Squadron Supreme. This was a harder edged version of the team that they dubbed "Supreme Power." The Nighthawk of this version was a rich man who used his abilities and resources in the pursuit of justice. However, he was willing to use deadly methods in that quest.

During the lead up to Marvel's Secret Wars crossover in 2015, a number of alternate versions of Earth were eliminated, including Nighthawk's. He was the lone survivor and he ended up on the "main" Marvel Earth where he and a group of heroes in similar situations banded together to form a new version of the Squadron Supreme.

6 CRAZIEST: KILL-CAT

Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon series was populated with a number of other superheroes besides the Dragon. Eventually, these other heroes even got their own spinoff series called Freak Force. Freak Force was a slightly more comedic approach to superhero adventures and in that series, Larsen introduced Kill-Cat, a Batman stand-in who was known for his wealth and his incompetence.

Not only was Kill-Cat incompetent, he also somehow managed to be dumb while being extremely arrogant He formed the not-so-dynamic duo called the Deadly Duo, along with Kid Avenger. They continue their hapless ways to this very day in the pages of Savage Dragon, where they have made sporadic appearances for over 20 years now.

5 COULD DROP HIM: CONFESSOR

The Confessor was a religious twist on the Batman setup that was introduced in Kurt Busiek's Astro City. We slowly learned more about the Confessor through the eyes of his new Robin stand-in, Altar Boy. Eventually, the Confessor's big secret was revealed -- he was a vampire!

Yes, back in the 19th Century, the Confessor was a Roman Catholic priest who gave into temptation and was seduced by a beautiful woman who turned out to be a vampire. Once he was made into a vampire himself, he locked himself away for decades. He ultimately decided to return to the outside world and use his vampiric abilities as a force for good.

4 CRAZIEST: LOCKDOWN

During one of their adventures, the Fantastic Four found themselves on a planet within the Negative Zone that had suffered a great ecological disaster. Since it was too dangerous for its people to remain topside, all of the planet's citizens were put into suspended animation, before having their minds plugged into a giant virtual reality simulation known as Shadow City.

When the Fantastic Four landed on the planet, they were captured and placed into the simulation as well as the Tetrad, a group of supervillains. The hero of Shadow City, Lockdown, along with his sidekick, Rosetta Stone, hunted the Tetrad down. Once they escaped form their suspended animation, Lockdown and Rosetta Stone also left to chase the Fantastic Four down.

3 COULD DROP HIM: PROMETHEUS

During the 1990s, DC Comics would often do special thematic events for those months that had five weeks in them, as the extra week wreaks havoc on comic book company's release schedules.

One of these events was a spotlight on the villains of the DC Universe, including the introduction of Prometheus, whose childhood made him the reverse Batman, as his criminals parents were killed by cops when he was young. Prometheus then used his skills and abilities to take down the entire Justice League, including Batman! Luckily, Catwoman showed up; he was not prepared for her and she defeated him.

2 CRAZIEST: HAWK-OWL

In 2002, Marvel announced a price increase for a few of its lower selling titles, including Captain Marvel. Peter David, the writer of that series, offered to give up most of his salary on the comic in exchange for Marvel not raising the price. Instead, this led to Marvel relaunching the series as part of an "event" to see which comic book would do better -- Captain Marvel or comics by Marvel Vice-President, Bill James, and then-new Marvel writer, Ron Zimmerman.

Captain Marvel won this particular challenge, with Zimmerman's offering being the odd Batman and Robin riff, Hawk-Owl and Woody, in the pages of Ultimate Adventures. Woody was the ultra-competent sidekick to the incompetent Hawk-Owl.

1 COULD DROP HIM: DARKWING II

Once the original Darkwing was eliminated by Invicible's father, Omni-Man, Invincible tried to stop his father's impending invasion of Earth. The father and son had a giant battle all around Earth and Invincible was left badly injured. Omni-Man, though, could not bring himself to finish his son, so he instead left Earth alone. After healing, Invincible went to work for the government as a superhero.

He then encountered the new Darkwing, who had been the sidekick of the original. This new Darkwing had the ability to control access to a "dark dimension" that he could trap people within. It made him a powerful superhero, except his mentor's demise caused him to snap and he began to off villains instead of arrest them. Invincible stopped him.