Imagine telling Herbert John Webber that the horticulture word he coined in 1903 has inspired some of the most well-known and infamous narratives in entertainment history. The term “clone” was first used to describe a colony of organisms developed asexually from a single parent, but it mainly means one thing in comic books: chaos.
We are all aware of the several super-powered Peter Parker clones that exist in the Spiderverse, but DC may have Marvel beat at their own game. The main problem with the Clone Saga was that it was far too confusing; Ben Reilly played Peter Parker, then Scarlet Spider, and then Kaine appears at some point, and by the time they have finished telling the story, we have lost interest.
DC chooses the more effective way, writing basic yet effective stories with their clones, which is a miracle given how many times their continuity has been reset. Some are heroes, while others are villains, yet they are all the most dangerous copies of their genetic roots in their own universes. The DC Universe’s Most Powerful Clones have been revealed in this article.
Bizarro
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Me no plane! I am Bizarro! Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right. Or do I do? Bizarro is, as his name implies, extremely bizarre. This ultra-powered, opposite-spewing clone of Superman has had more origin stories than the Spectre at this point; and that is saying something. The original Bizarro wasn’t even cloned from Superman; it was cloned from Superboy and was created by Smallville’s Professor Dalton via an imperfect duplication ray.
The professor tripped, his machine activated itself & took aim at Superboy, birthing the oddest thing to exist in DC since the Joker. The second time, it was Lex Luthor who zapped Bizarro into existence, with the added caveat of being the “complete opposite” of Superman. Luthor intended on using him as a mindless slave who would obey his every command, but history repeated itself yet again and struck this clone with the curse of “imperfection”. And so, for Bizarro, Ugly was Beautiful, Smelly was Fragrant and Chaos was Peace.
Luthor rejected him- obviously- after which Bizarro embarked on a life journey that would truly live up to his name. Lois Lane created a Bizarro version of herself to accompany the Superman clone, and the two went off into the stars, created a cube-shaped planet just because, and populated it by creating countless Bizarro clones of themselves.
They called the planet Htrae and got up to all sorts of madness, including creating a Batman version of Bizarro, invading Earth, nearly defeating Superman, and then performing an exact frame-by-frame rendition of the explosion of Krypton, but in reverse. So instead of saving their child, Bizarro & Bizarro Lois blast it into the planet’s core and then celebrate their impending doom with open arms and ecstasy.
Bizarro is undoubtedly one of the strongest DC clones in existence- he’s a Superman clone, for Christ’s sake, and can only be killed by synthesized Blue Kryptonite- but it is the sheer outrageous nature of the stories he’s involved in that makes him such a memorable character. Bizarro is dangerous, bubbly, menacing, cuddly, violent, vulnerable, chaotic, and frantic, all at the same time; and honestly, we relate.
Manhunter
Okay so this one is a bit of a wild ride, try to keep up. DC doesn’t have just one Manhunter; they have literally thousands who vary in shapes, sizes & well, and biological composition. If you’re a die-hard Green Lantern fan, you’re probably thinking about the failed experiment that came before the Lantern Corps, where the Guardians of the Universe thought that a bunch of emotionless robots with the mantra of “No Man Is Safe from the Manhunter” could be a peaceful intergalactic law enforcement organization.
If that is the case, then don’t worry; they’re going to show up eventually. For now, we focus on the man known as Paul Kirk: Private Investigator, Acrobat & Martial Artist extraordinaire. He actually made his first appearance in Adventure Comics issue #58 in a series entitled “Paul Kirk, Manhunter” which was an admittedly clever case of wordplay with respect to his profession.
There was another character called Dan Richards, who was the “original” Manhunter and had his backstory confused with Kirk’s, but that’s a story for some other time. Long story short: Paul Kirk used to be a big game hunter but after having exhausted all his options in that line of work, he realized that criminals were the biggest prize of them all and started assisting law enforcement agencies as an amateur detective.
After his friend Police Inspector Donovan was killed by the costumed villain Buzzard, Kirk was approached by a mysterious group known as the Cult of the Manhunters who told him they were dedicated to the cause of justice; just like him. This Cult offered Kirk the chance to fight crime and create real change by vastly enhancing his healing, tracking & acrobatic abilities.
Paul agreed and was given a subtle power boost and a red-and-blue costume that turned him into the Manhunter. Over the years, Paul Kirk has been involved in Clone Saga-levels of storyline convolution, with one of his clones going on to create the Secret Society of Super-Villains under direct orders from Darkseid! The original Paul Kirk continued to fight crime under the assumption that he was imparting justice; until he realized he had become an instrument in the pre-Green Lantern Manhunters’ vengeful quest for global & universal conquest!
To this end, the cult created thousands of clones of Paul Kirk, in preparation for their grand invasion. Things get so bad that Paul has to break off from the Council that has supported him his whole life and start killing all his clones, one by one, with an assist from Batman. We’ll tell you this much; it wasn’t an easy task, and in the end, they didn’t end up getting all of them, which should terrify anyone with half a will to live.
Mondo
Credit where it’s due; Marvel actually managed to tell a compelling story involving clones for once! Black Tom Cassidy and Banshee Sean Cassidy had an age-old sibling rivalry based around the oldest trope in the book: both brothers loved the same girl, and that girl chose one brother, so the other swore undying revenge on his own flesh & blood. You know, general family drama.
So when Black Tom figured out Cordelia Frost’s plan to usurp her sister Emma’s position as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, he launched an epic scheme to take revenge and gain control at the same time. You see, Cordelia had this friend called Mondo, and she planned to use him in her scheme to become the White Queen herself; so Black Tom decided to exploit this golden opportunity and further his own plans.
He kidnapped Mondo, and in a neat homage to Herbert Webber, cloned him using his own plant-based powers. When Generation-X tracked the kidnappers down and found their team member’s friend alive and well, they breathed a sigh of relief and took him back home, welcoming him to the team. Little did they know they’d just brought the enemy into their camp. Mondo’s clone begins wrecking shop against his Generation-X teammates as Black Tom engages Emma Frost & Banshee in battle.
Even though he’s just a clone, he still possesses all of Mondo’s awesome matter-absorbing abilities. See, Mondo is a unique mutant. Whenever his body comes into contact with any kind of matter- organic or inorganic- it imbues him with its properties, allowing him to use them however he sees fit.
Mondo’s clone was able to harness this same power and almost managed to kill Jubilee before he was shot dead by the anti-mutant militant Bastion. Though the character was short-lived, Mondo’s clone was one of the best characters of his type, and was part of a highly underrated comic book storyline that needs your attention, ASAP!
Doomsday
Nope, we’re not talking about the thousands of inferior copies of the OG behemoth that Darkseid created in order to trick the Justice League and capture Supergirl. We’re talking about the man himself. The giant who slew DC’s god, the boned-marvel, the Juggernaut without the loud-mouth but with pretty much the same IQ level. Yes, dear viewers, it might surprise you that the Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice version isn’t the only iteration of Doomsday to be a clone; the intergalactic serial killer himself happens to be a clone.
See, back in the day, and we’re talking pre-dinosaur era here, Krypton was one mean place to live at. Imagine Mad Max but like a thousand times worse, with no cars, and the only people around are violent monsters who will bash your skull in without a second thought.
In fact, it is said that the inhabitants of pre-historic Krypton were some of the strongest beings in the universe, savage warriors who were kinda like the Fremen from Frank Herbert’s Dune; a hard people bred by a harsh life. The scientist Bertron wanted to use these conditions as the breeding ground for the “ultimate living creature”, and so he sent a newborn babe into the planet’s surface and waited for it to die- either at the hands of Krypton’s hellish conditions or its brutish residents.
He would then go on to collect the remains of the subject, inject them into the next, and continue that cycle for 40 horrifying years, during which he ran through test subjects like toilet paper after Taco Tuesdays. The end result was this; the ultimate survivor, the destroyer of worlds, and the slaughterer of countless members of the Green Lantern Corps. There’s a reason Darkseid cloned him, after all.
Doomsday is the ultimate embodiment of a “final reckoning”; in that, he simply cannot be killed. Not permanently, anyway. Due to the trauma of dying and being resurrected constantly for 4 decades, this entity has come to hate all living things. Every time Doomsday “dies”, he comes back having overcome the last thing that killed him, making him immortal in the sense that the only thing that can kill him is entropy.
Doomsday is freakishly strong, freakishly fast, and insanely durable, being one of the only people in DC capable of withstanding Darkseid’s Omega Beams, head-on. He’s also relentless, capable of fighting for months on end, as evidenced by his infamous battle across America with Superman.
Speaking of which, he’s also one of the only people to have definitively killed the Man of Steel, making Doomsday easily the strongest “clone” in DC history. It’s just a shame that they didn’t handle the character as well as they should have, although we have to admit, we have a soft spot for The Devastator from the Dark Multiverse.
Supergirl (Matrix)
You know, there are a lot of crazy alternate versions of the world’s first superhero and his extended family, but even Bizarro wouldn’t leave you scratching your head like this character. So, a long time ago, in a Pocket Universe, there was a version of Earth that did not have Superman, where Lex Luthor was a good person, and where Earth was attacked by 3 Kryptonian criminals who had escaped from the Phantom Zone.
In a desperate bid to protect his reality, Luthor uses an artificial life-form called the protoplasmic matrix to create his own version of Earth’s Mightiest Hero. And so Matrix was born: a female humanoid who possessed some Kryptonian abilities and some unique. She could shape-shift, become invisible, and also had a strong grasp of telekinesis; powers that no Kryptonian has! Lex shaped her to look like his lover Lana Lang, implanted her memories within her, and gave her a Supergirl uniform to become his Pocket Reality’s protector.
While this doesn’t technically make her a clone, what happens next will explain why she’s on our list. So, Matrix fails to protect her reality (shocker) even with the help of Superman, so she decides to migrate to his reality (aka Earth-One) and start over, there. She’s taken in by John & Martha, finds a proper family with the Kents, teaches Superboy how to be a hero, and joins in on the action herself.
But when she comes across Lex Luthor, boy oh boy do sparks fly! Because remember; part of Matrix’s conscience contains Lex’s former lover, so her attraction to him is only natural. It causes all sorts of problems for Supes, especially, given that Lex isn’t exactly a good guy in his reality but they manage to come to terms and co-exist with each other anyway. That is until Matrix finds out that Lex has made literally thousands of Supergirl clones from her DNA to use as his personal army.
We’ve seen what happens when Lex Luthor tries to clone something in past earlier on this list, and the results were similar here, too. While all of them had the basic abilities that Supergirl possessed, they were inferior to her in the end. Matrix was able to take out every last one of them and ostensibly had gotten over her former lover by the time her rampage had ended. And you know what, we say good for her.
Heretic
Man does Talia al Ghul not know how to process her emotions. We’d ask her to consult a therapist, but we’re afraid we won’t hear from them ever again if they conduct even a single session with her. Batman has had a lot of lovers in his 80+ year publication history- and we mean a LOT- but only one of them has ever given him a son. Damien Wayne grew up in the shadows as a weapon of the League of Assassins and was Talia’s last hope of reuniting with her beloved. She’d hoped that by bearing Bruce’s child, she’d convince him to join her in her quest for world domination.
When that didn’t work, she sent Damien after him in an attempt to usurp the mantle of The Batman from him; but the youth ended up following in his father’s footsteps and joined the Bat-Family as the latest incarnation of Robin. Dejected, frustrated, and pissed above all, Talia al Ghul decided that she would create the perfect son for herself not through love, but through science.
She took a DNA sample from Damien and incubated it within the belly of a whale in a gross metaphor that furthered the malevolent lore surrounding her organization Leviathan. That sample grew into something worse than a monster; it grew up to become The Heretic. This “Damien” celebrated its birth by immediately slaughtering all the metahumans stationed in the facility; he was born adult-sized, you see.
The Heretic honed his skills alongside his “mother” and became her personal protector in the course of his training. If you thought Damien Wayne was a cool fighter, wait till you see what he can actually do if he lets go of his code of honor. Because The Heretic is supposed to be a dark reflection of Damien’s possible future and by that metric, he is downright terrifying.
Huge, muscular, agile, more powerful than most of the Bat-Family, and more dangerous than all of them combined. The Heretic has taken down Robin, Nightwing & Batman multiple times. He even killed Knight during a Leviathan op that was raided by Batman Inc. In fact, Heretic was so strong that he went rogue and tried to take over Gotham City, and Talia herself had to put an end to him by cutting his head off. Talk about righting your wrongs. Sheesh.
Donna Troy/Wonder Girl
If you’re ever asked who has a worse case of origin retcons in DC history than Hawkman, point them in the direction of Wonder Girl for us, would you? The iconic teenage superhero is a big part of mainstream American comic book culture. She has technically existed since the year 1958 when she was introduced as a version of Diana Prince who went on global adventures with her mom, her adult version, and even a baby version of herself called Wonder Tot! Awww! But then DC went ahead and made a rather off-putting potpourri out of its continuity, and Wonder Girl went through a bunch of bizarre origin revisions, each worse than the last one.
It started off by explaining that Wonder Girl’s actual name was Donna Troy and that she was a teenager Wonder Woman saved from an apartment fire as a baby. Diana took the orphaned child to Paradise Island, raised her like an adopted sister, granted her Amazonian powers and fighting techniques, and sent her off to become a Teen Titan. Donna had the Lasso of Persuasion and the Bracelets of Submission, to mirror her “elder sister’s” paraphernalia, and followed her example for the most part.
And then John Byrne got involved and things started getting really, REALLY weird. Turns out, Donna Troy isn’t even human; she’s a clay-based clone of the original Diana Prince! The sorceress Magala created her as a potential playmate for Diana of Themiscyra using a magical mirror that duplicated Wonder Woman but gave the copy her own personality. However, this clone ended up being abducted by the evil Dark Angel, who then cursed her to experience the end of countless tragic lives in an endless cycle.
Fun fact: Turns out Dark Angel herself was a version of Donna Troy from Earth-Seven! Confused yet? We know we are! One thing that isn’t confusing is her status as one of the strongest “clones” ever created in DC history. Ingrained with Amazonian training and imbued with divine powers at different points in her characterization, Donna Troy is one of the strongest superheroes to have ever existed, period.
Over the course of the next few years, Donna Troy would undergo a gimmick change, see her abilities fluctuate all over the scale, and become one of the only people to remember the DC Multiverse after all realities were merged into one post-Crises. She would also become the last hope of the Titans, but that’s another tale for another time. For now, all you need to know is that the most-iconic female teenage superhero of all time has been a clone all along!
Solomon Grundy
DC’s favorite zombie has been cloned not once, not twice, but thrice! Solomon Grundy is a weird character, and that’s not just because of his undead status. At times, he’s been strong enough to literally pummel Superman into running away. At other times, he’s been sewer-dwelling loner emo who was beaten into submission by Batman and befriended Two-Face once because he “related to him”. But the one thing that makes him such a prime candidate for cloning is brute strength and the fact that nothing can faze him.
Grundy doesn’t feel pain like normal humans or superhumans and he’s a partial plant elemental, meaning he will always come back from whatever damage he takes, lethal or otherwise. The first person to clone him was actually Grundy himself! The Solomon Grundy character originated on Earth-Two, and after tearing things up for a bit there, realized there must be a counterpart of him on Earth-One.
So he travels there to join up with himself, but Earth-One Solomon Grundy is nowhere to be found. Turns out, he’d be born from his Earth-Two counterpart’s remains and give Superman so much grief that the Man of Steel had to end up depositing Grundy on an inhospitable planet just to stop his rampage. This was a terrible idea because Grundy created thousands of clones of himself and invaded Earth, plaguing Superman for years.
Kal-El was only able to stop the undead brute with a compound he obtained from S.T.A.R. Labs that rendered him & his clones “inert”. The second instance of Solomon Grundy being cloned came with the prequel comics to the Batman: Arkham video game series, where Calendar Man created 7 clones of Grundy for the 7 days in a week; you know, typical Calendar Man humor.
Batman had to deal with them in the rather inhospitable conditions of Arkham Asylum, though he managed to eke out the win thanks to the fact that these clones were nowhere near the level of the original’s strength & durability. That would change the 3rd time around, as the evil sorceress, Selena created yet another clone of Solomon Grundy to fill the ranks of the New Fatal Five and help the Emerald Empress defeat Supergirl.
This clone was much closer to its original in terms of strength and overall durability, and did manage to outmatch Kara Zor-El on a number of occasions, but was ultimately resigned to a bad guy’s fate and ended up facing defeat at the hands of the Kryptonian. Still, Solomon Grundy’s unique existence makes him the perfect candidate for creating powerful clones who will be willing to do whatever you bid them to do.
Guardian
A costumed superhero with a bullet-proof shield who thought it was his duty to “guard society” and drove around in a motorcycle with a pack of Howling Newsboy Legion. If that description is ringing any bells in your head, well, it’s for a reason. Jack Kirby is a Marvel legend, but he has forayed into DC territory on more than a couple of occasions.
During his first run, he created the Guardian, who debuted in Star-Spangled Comics issue #7 and was Captain America all but in the name; enhanced strength, speed, durability, agility, healing, hand-to-hand combat proficiency, and a ridiculous shield that was part of his design and offense. Some have even referred to him as DC’s Captain America clone; and then they took a headfirst dive into that narrative and gave Jim Harper his own clones, emphasis on the plural.
When Kirby returned to DC in the 70s, he revived this Golden Age character and turned him into the basis for a massive conspiracy. See, back in the day, the Newsboy Legion was a scrappy band of 4 orphan boys who had colorful adventures with their legal guardian Harper while doubting that he was the vigilante known as The Guardian at the same time. Both parties dropped out of view for a few decades until they resurfaced in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, where things took a turn for the worse.
Though Jim had hung up the Guardian mantle, he continued to keep his body in shape even at his advanced age. This prompted a visit from his former protégés, who asked Jim if they could take a sample of his DNA for research purposes. They’d become great scientists, you see, and wanted to discover the secret to his great physical conditioning at this stage of his life.
Trusting his Legion would be the biggest mistake of Jim Harper’s life, as it was revealed that they were involved with the infamous Project Cadmus and that they’d acquired his DNA for a very specific purpose: cloning. Apparently, Jim had the perfect genetic make-up for creating cloned super-soldiers and if you know anything about Project Cadmus, you know they couldn’t let this opportunity pass up.
Though the Newsboy Legion eventually comes clear to their Guardian and manages to clear their names with him, ultimately, it proves futile. James Harper dies during a break-in attempt at the Cadmus facility, which only serves to delay their cloning project, not stop it entirely. Even today, there are clones of the Guardian running amok in the DCU, either programmed to serve Cadmus’ goals of World Domination or actively fighting against it.
Adolf Hitler
Yes. You read that right. Adolf Hitler is something of an entertainment softball; he looks funny, acts charismatic, and is genuinely one of the worst human beings to have ever existed. His genocidal campaign against Germany’s Jewish population is his worst crime to date, yes, but it isn’t the only straw in Hitler’s demented hat. What he did fundamentally re-shaped world history, and all the lives that were lost during World War 2 can be attributed to his insane ambitions and dogmatic worldview.
So it only makes sense that someone who thinks just like him will try to “bring him back to life” years later to further his own goals of World Domination. Baron Bedlam used to worship Hitler as a youth, and when his Fuhrer visited Markovia this one time, he hid something in his family castle. After Hitler’s death, Bedlam would become obsessed with opening that secret chamber, believing it to have contained Hitler’s cells and intending to create a clone of Hitler so they could re-establish the Nazi regime.
The Baron would have to wait for a few years, though, as he was driven out of Markovia for committing war crimes against its citizens and its ruling class. He became a chemical industry giant and finally got his hands on what he wanted; the DNA of the world’s worst human being. Bedlam assembled the Masters of Disaster and launched a Soviet-backed invasion of Markovia, where he was able to create a near-identical clone of Adolf Hitler in complete secrecy with the help of Madame Ovary.
Using this new Fuhrer, the Baron hoped to bring an end to the USSR and kick-start the Fourth Reich in the year 1986. To that end, he obtained the object Hitler had stored at the castle all those years ago: a Proton Cloud Generator capable of disintegrating human flesh, leaving nothing but bones behind. And then, he started “re-educating” his Fuhrer in what has to be one of the darkest storylines in comic book history. Baron Bedlam forced the practically infantile clone of Adolf Hitler to watch Nazi propaganda films on a loop, with several graphic scenes depicting the Holocaust.
Then, in what has to be the most uncomfortable development in an already disturbing story, he’s given a mentally-impaired Jewish maid with a visibly prominent Star of David locket and a handgun; and left to decide whether he wanted to embrace his glorious identity or not. Thankfully, it looks like even the Face of Evil would choose to kill itself if it got a chance to relive its crimes, which is exactly what happened here.
After the Outsiders attacked the Masters of Disaster and defeated both them and Baron Bedlam, they happened across the secret chamber where Adolf Hitler’s clone was being held and came across his cold, dead body. Sure, it isn’t a clone story where Hitler comes back out onto the world stage and regains his WW2 status instantly; this isn’t a breakdown video for Amazon’s Hunters or The Man in the Castle, after all. But what it is, is a sobering reality-check; if you ever doubted the idea that Bedlam was batshit crazy, the fact that he made a Hitler clone kill itself through repentance & sheer terror should be enough.
In Conclusion
When it comes to superhero stories, cloning is like, the most obvious fall-back but there’s a reason for that: it’s such an interesting premise! We remember when Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996. While it was a scientific marvel that we had become adept enough at genetics to be able to clone an entire mammal, it was also kind of terrifying. Many of us thought at the time: Well, they’re cloning sheep now, what’s next? Us?
And that’s where that morbid sense of curiosity and intrigue starts to set in. Spider-Man’s Clone Saga might have been extremely convoluted, but the one thing it also was, was interesting. It kept readers hooked, kept them guessing, and even birthed an entirely new clone storyline in the admittedly much-better Clone Conspiracy Saga from 2016.
Even the entries on this list prove that whether they’re super-powered or completely powerless, the addition of a clone to the mix is an instant breath of fresh air that makes the story that much more intriguing and compelling. Clones have been used in comic books since they began printing, and will continue to be used for as long as they exist; and that, in our opinion at least, is a good thing.