"The Face Is Familiar..."

It’s a popular belief — or at least a staple of adventure fiction — that every one of us has a double, someone somewhere out there who looks exactly like us. I guess it only makes sense, then, that a guy like Superman, who does everything on a grander scale than mere humans, has even more duplicates. A lot more.

The most famous dead ringer for the Man of Steel is dear old Dad himself, Jor-El. Throughout the legend, Krypton’s greatest scientist is shown to have strongly resembled his famous son. In fact, it’s safe to say that physically he’s pretty much just Superman in a headband. Way back in Superman #61 (1949), a trip to the Krypton of the past gives Superman his first look at his father, and even before he deduces their connection, he can hardly miss the resemblance.

Over time, Jor-El’s “costume” would undergo many changes, but not his face, which remained a mirror image of his son’s. I suppose the idea was to reinforce the father-son bond by keeping the resemblance so strong; since we’d come to associate Superman’s features with heroism, giving Jor-El the same face was a signal he shared a lot of his son’s other traits. In fact, over time this tradition was so well-established that when Superman: The Movie finally came out I was put off by its heavy-set, white-haired geezer of a Jor-El…who looked nothing like Christopher Reeve. I don’t know, maybe in the back of my mind I just assumed they’d get the same actor to play both roles.

Anyway, there’s some evidence that the El family simply had a very strong gene pool. In Lois Lane #15 (Feb. 1960), we meet the young Kandorian scientist Van-Zee, who despite being a mere cousin is also virtually indistinguishable from Superman (and thus Jor-El).

Using Kandorian monitors to follow Superman’s adventures, Van-Zee falls in love with Lois Lane from afar and leaves Kandor to woo her in person. She turns him down, but since after all true love is mostly a matter of looks, he searches the world over for a Lois lookalike. Ultimately he finds one in the form of wealthy heiress Sylvia DeWitt and takes her back to Kandor, where they raise a family.

Over the years, Van-Zee proves himself a valued ally of Superman and in time assumes the mantle of Kandor’s resident superhero Nightwing, a role originated by his cousin Kal.

Obviously, a friendly lookalike comes in mighty handy when protecting a secret identity, and besides Van-Zee there were several such helpers, including Kell Orr of the planet Xenon, whose father Zoll Orr looks just like Jor-El (logically enough). In Superman #119 (Feb. 1958), Kell Orr fills in for Superman on Earth while the real deal is on Xenon averting a galactic catastrophe.

In Action Comics #265 (Jun. ’60), we meet yet another heroic double on yet another planet, and this time Superman gets to return Kel Lor’s favor…sort of. On the Earth-like planet Oceana, the hero known as Hyper-Man forges a career that closely parallels Superman’s; he was rocketed from a doomed planet as an infant, gained super-powers on his new world, adopted a secret identity with the initials CK (Chester King) and is harassed by/in love with a girl reporter with the initials LL (Lydia Long). Superman so closely resembles Hyper-Man that he’s able to fill in as “Chester King” to help preserve the hero’s secret identity (although it doesn’t turn out that way, but that’s another story).

Alas, not all Superman dopplegangers used their heroically handsome features for niceness. In Action Comics #252 (May ’59) we meet John Corben, a crooked reporter whose body is irreparably damaged in a car accident, resulting in experimental surgery that turns him into the half-human, half-robot supervillain, Metallo. Realizing that “with my mustache shaved off I could pass as Superman’s twin,” Corben disguises himself as the Man of Steel and attempts to kill both him and Lois.

On numerous occasions, Superman’s “double” was Superman himself, as exposure to Red Kryptonite split him into two physically identical beings, first in Action Comics #293 and again in Action Comics #311 (April 1964). In both cases, the Red-K “twins” were in conflict, as one was a super-powered but evil Superman and the other was a powerless but good Clark Kent. Remembering these incidents, Superman deliberately splits himself into two equal beings in the celebrated Imaginary Tale, “The Saga of Superman Red and Superman Blue,” only this time both Supermen have powers and both are good (Superman #162, July 1963). Between them they pretty much solve all of Earth’s problems once and for all.

It’s debatable whether those literal duplicates belong on a list of lookalikes, but one similar creation certainly does: Super-Menace, a living copy of Superman, is created when a freak cosmic force strikes baby Kal-El’s rocket on its way to Earth (as revealed in Superman #137, May 1960). While Kal-El lands near Smallville to be adopted by the kindly Ma and Pa Kent, his infant duplicate is found and raised by a husband-and-wife team of petty thieves and con artists. This corrupting influence in his formative years turns the second Superman to evil, eventually bringing him into conflict with the Man of Steel.

As he is, after all, a creature made of pure energy and not organic tissue, Super-Menace is pretty much doomed from the start, and sure enough he explodes at story’s end, making sure to take his hated parents with him to oblivion.

Almost exactly a decade later in Superman #225 (Apr. 1970), a similar incident results in yet another duplicate Superman when aliens aim a ray at the Action Ace as he travels in deep space, creating a ”living, breathing, hyper-plastic copy of Superman” without his knowledge.

The intent is to send the ersatz Superman to Earth — convinced by the aliens that he’s the real deal — so he can steal the real hero’s powers and, under the mind control of the aliens, assist in an invasion of Earth. The plan backfires when the fake Man of Steel commits suicide at story’s end.

Much more committed to the cause of evil was Mala, one of three Kryptonian criminals rocketed into space on a prison ship by Jor-El in the pre-Phantom Zone era. In his second visit to Earth (Action Comics #194, July ’54), Mala attempts to get close enough to Superman to kill him by assuming the identity of his “close friend” Clark Kent.

Frankly, Wayne Boring‘s art on this tale makes it unclear whether Mala is supposed to be a natural lookalike for Superman/Kent; sometimes he looks like him, sometimes he doesn’t. On the cover, he’s shown thinking “I’m disguised as Clark Kent,” but in the panel above, he implies the disguise is limited to the glasses. It’s possible Mala applied makeup or one of those Mission: Impossible-style rubber masks as part of his disguise, but if so it happened off-panel and is never mentioned, and since the mythos has a long tradition of considering a flimsy pair of horn-rims a complete “disguise,” I’m keeping him on the list.

So together with Jor-El and Van-Zee, Mala makes three Kryptonian duplicates of Superman, but the number grows considerably when you factor in the population of Kandor, apparently simply teeming with Superman twins. Several of them band together to form the Superman Emergency Squad, a force of miniature, super-powered helpers chosen based on their “close resemblance” to the hero (Van-Zee is a member). Here we see them harassing Supergirl on the cover to Action Comics #276 (May 1961).

Perhaps realizing the extreme statistical improbability of an entire gang of Superman carbon copies living in a single city, later versions of the Squad dropped the lookalike angle. However, we might reasonably assume one alumnus of the original team was Vol-Don of the Kandorian Look-Alike Squad, made up of dead ringers for everyone in Superman’s inner circle, including Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane and Lana Lang. Vol-Don is the team’s “Clark Kent look-alike” (which naturally means that without the specs, he’s a double for Superman).

This story raises the interesting question: If Van-Zee’s “love” for Lois Lane could be satisfied with any Lois lookalike, why search Earth for one when there’s already a Lois clone in the bottle with him?

The most commonly used lookalikes in the mythos are the Superman robots, created by Superman to fill in for him in his heroic guise and also as Clark Kent. Though he tends to consider them mere devices, the robots exhibit loyalty, courage and on occasion ingenuity and independent thinking that supports the argument they are a form of independent and intelligent, albeit mechanical life. In Superman #163 (Aug. 1963), one of these robots shows up as Wonder-Man, having received an upgrade from aliens that makes him a match for Superman, although as part of the makeover he loses his resemblance to his former master. Not so Android-I, a sophisticated artificial lookalike created by Superman in Superman #174 (Jan. 1965). After a lab accident at the Fortress of Solitude makes Superman believe his creation has been destroyed, Android-I returns to assumes his creator’s identity and make a suddenly powerless Clark Kent doubt his own sanity.

A more convoluted twist on this premise occurs in Superman #198 (July 1967), when a duplicate Clark Kent bursts into the Daily Planet, exposing Superman’s secret identity with an “x-ray gun.”

The duplicate Clark turns out to be from a parallel Earth where “Clark Kent” is a genuine Earth man and “Superman” is evil. Traveling to this second Earth, our Superman does battle with his evil counterpart but in due course it’s revealed that the second Clark, the second Superman and indeed the entire population of the parallel Metropolis are androids populating a fake Earth as part of an elaborate ruse (to say the least) by the Superman Revenge Squad.

With a bit of imagination, Superman lookalikes are also perfect fodder for Lois Lane stories. For instance, in Lois Lane #3, our favorite girl reporter is in the “small waterfront town” of Hadley when she meets Mark Benton, a man who looks just like Clark Kent, but behaves in a much more manly fashion.

Lois and Benton enter into a whirlwind romance, which ends in heartache when Benton tires of Lois’ constant snooping. Lois suspects Benton of being the mysterious “Robin Hood” character who’s been distributing stolen money to the needy. It turns out she’s right, except that the money isn’t stolen; it belongs to Mark in his true identity as Ronald Van Horton, richest man in town. Since Lois wouldn’t trust him, though, he breaks off their relationship, costing her a shot at marriage and millions.

At least Lois learned a valuable lesson that made her into a better person, right? Fat chance. Years later, in Lois Lane #24 (Apr. 1961), a match-making computer selects as Lois’ ideal mate the handsome sportsman Roger Warner, who just happens to look exactly like Clark Kent, though he sure doesn’t act like him.

Charming, cultured, multi-lingual, athletic, good-looking, wealthy and even (as he proves by saving a drowning woman) heroic, Warner has everything Lois could want in a man. Everything, that is, except hair. When it’s revealed that Warner wears a wig to cover his bald dome, Lois recoils in horror, causing Warner to run away and break off their romance. “But his baldness wouldn’t have mattered,” thinks Lois, “…or would it?” Later we get our answer when Lois declares she’s going back to pursuing her true love: “At least I’m sure that Superman won’t lose his hair!”

Some “doubles” turn out to be red herrings. In Action Comics #341 (Sept. 1966), what seems to be a second Clark Kent — with super-powers, yet — is revealed as the Phantom Zone villain Professor Vakox, who without the aid of a rubber mask looks nothing at all like Superman. The fact that he does don the disguise suggests editor Mort Weisinger saw doubles as a sales tool in the Silver Age. We already know Julie Schwartz believed in the power of “gorilla” covers to sell comics; apparently Mort liked the way “doubles” sold Superman comics. Otherwise you’d think the promise of a battle with a super-powerful Phantom Zone foe would be incentive enough for a kid to plunk down his 12 cents. Instead we get this cover, which despite showing Superman and “Clark Kent” throwing cannon balls at each other (big whoop) is chiefly concerned with making us believe both combatants are “genuine.”

In Action 371 (Jan 1969), a spy working for an unnamed foreign power kayos Clark Kent and, since he looks just like him, assumes his identity to carry out a campaign of espionage against the United States. A freak accident causes Superman to forget his secret identity, kicking off a four-part storyline in which he tries out various new ones while the fake Clark continues his masquerade, ending in Action Comics #475 with a showdown with the impostor and the other members of the spy ring.

The famous “Kryptonite No More” in Superman #233 ends with the creation of yet another energy-based Superman double. This one would sometimes be known as “the Quarrmer,” due to his origins in the alternate dimension of Quarrm, but is more famously know as the Sand Superman, as his body is made of sand from a desert somewhere in the Western U.S. Though he fights Superman at various points, the Sand Superman isn’t completely villainous. As they say, “it’s complicated,” but in short his existence depends on powers stolen from Superman, making him central to writer Denny O’Neill’s plan to refit the Superman mythos for the 1970s with a less omnipotent Man of Steel.

Another “Bronze Age” lookalike is actor Gregory Reed, the man who plays Superman on Earth-1 television. First encountered in Action Comics #414 (July ’72), Reed is successful and wealthy thanks to his career as a small-screen superhero, but also bitterly resentful that typecasting has ended his ability to win other roles. His resentment is especially acute since a fire on set left him disfigured; his resulting dependency on heavy make-up, coupled with the use of “lifts” and fake muscles, makes him feel like a total fake, and hateful towards the real deal. With the aid of black magic, Reed temporarily switches bodies with Superman, but once restored, Superman takes pity on Reed and later gives him plastic surgery to restore his lookalike features. In subsequent stories, Reed is shown to be a friend and helper to Superman.

I’m probably forgetting plenty of examples, but those are the ones that jump immediately to mind. As much as this preponderance of super-clones strains credulity, it does in a cock-eyed way lend support to one of the central conceits of the whole Superman mythos. If there really are so many dozens of men running around with the same face, then it must be a lot easier for the people of Metropolis to swallow the notion that Clark Kent and Superman are two separate people. Indeed the glasses may not even be necessary; with so many lookalikes running around, the red cape and blue long-johns are about the only things that make Superman at all physically remarkable.

Without those gaudy duds, he’s just a face in the crowd.