It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's ... Some Guy! -- Sentinels Of The Multiverse

Sentinels of the Multiverse started life as a tabletop card game, although I have lately been playing the computer version. I have played it before, defeating all of the included villains and then growing bored, but I just recently got a good deal on all of the DLC, so I dove back in and have been having a lot of fun revisiting it. The game plays out as a comic-book-style battle between three to five superheroes and a dastardly villain; it's intended to be played cooperatively, although the video game port allows you to play solo and satisfy your inner alpha gamer. Each superhero plays from a deck of cards and uses various powers and special abilities that they either start the game with or develop progressively; the villain then plays programmatically based on an algorithm set out on their character card and draws from a villain deck, while an environment deck filled with dangers and plot twists, like a bustling metropolis or a dinosaur-filled jungle, throws its own wrenches into the works. Even when heroes go down, they can still help their teammates through a choice of powers on the back of their character card, and villains cards flip between two sides that provide variety to their play.

Legacy takes a hit from the villain's terrible might hand.

You won't find any copyrighted DC or Marvel characters in Sentinels of the Multiverse, but the heroes definitely have a familiar ring to them. There's Legacy, the team leader and a pretty clear Superman clone; The Wraith, a kind of female Batman; Tachyon, an obvious copy of the Flash; Bunker, a beefier version of Iron Man; and Tempest, who ... well, Tempest is a bit more of an original character, like a combination of Storm, Aquaman, and a Skrull. Let it not be said that Sentinels is full of blatant ripoffs. As the expansions ramify, the characters become more and more individuated and creative, though many of them are still clearly inspired by other better-known intellectual properties. The villains, too, are pretty familiar faces; for instance, the tutorial antagonist, Baron Blade. He has a death ray, he has an army of henchmen and brilliant devices, and just when you think you've defeated him, he comes back even more powerful than before. There's a rampaging AI, an alien conqueror, a master assassin, a primeval force of nature. The brilliant thing about Sentinels is that, within a fairly simple set of basic mechanics, every hero and every villain plays differently, and each mechanically reflects the characteristics of the archetype they embody. Legacy bolsters and sacrifices himself for his teammates, the Wraith employs stealth and deploys a barrage of gadgets, Tachyon plays a flurry of action after action, and Bunker switches between power-suit modes that specialize in one or another aspect of gameplay. The mechanics and theme of this game are perfectly in tune.

A laudable, if somewhat generic sentiment.

The employment of ersatz heroes and standard types has a long and beloved history in comic books themselves. Looking for Supermans? You can take your pick; in addition to countless spinoffs, reboots, and re-imaginings from the Communist Superman of the brilliant Red Son  to the bizarre bearded maniac of Superman: at Earth's End, there are plenty of unmistakable knock-offs: the title character from the self-aware homage Supreme; the Samaritan from Kurt Busiek's loving tribute to comic archetypes, Astro City; the subversive Omniman from Invincible and his eponymous son; and too many others to exhaustively catalogue. Superman is of course a valuable intellectual property, and one may not reproduce his likeness without the permission of the owners of that property, though that line has become blurred with the growing benign neglect of such rights when it comes to fanfiction and fanart. But in the majority of cases, if one wants to tell a Superman story without access to the Superman license, or to tell a story exploring the concept of Superman without necessarily involving the character himself, one must necessarily turn to disguises, obfuscations, and winking nods.

Things can get pretty hairy if the cards don't go your way. I wish I could say I bounced back from this.

But that raises an interesting question. What is it exactly that makes Legacy so clearly a dollar-store version of Superman? After all, Legacy is not a refugee from a doomed alien planet, nor does he gain his powers from the yellow sun of Earth; he is a normal human whose superhuman abilities come from a magic ring passed down through generations of his family. He has blonde hair, not black, and his skin-tight bodysuit is primarily white with blue accents, not primarily blue with red accents. He may be quite strong, but he does not seem to have the ability to set entire planets on different orbits, nor is he invulnerable -- he takes damage from attacks just like any of the other heroes. Obviously, if we are to maintain that Legacy is in some sense the same character as Superman, these superficially defining attributes are not in fact essential to the character.

Well, Superman has been called the Big Blue Boy Scout. He is a leader, and he leads from the front, using his invulnerable body to shield others from harm; as mentioned before, Legacy's abilities also involve him taking damage for the greater good. And Superman, by his moral example, charisma, and unfailingly (most of the time) optimistic outlook, inspires his teammates in the Justice League to strive their utmost and persevere in the face of adversity; likewise, Legacy's signature power is to increase the damage dealt by other heroes, and alternate powers involve the same kind of bolstering of other players' abilities. Finally, though he has at times been portrayed as a super-genius, Superman has a tendency to turn first to force to solve problems, as employing unmatched force is what he's best at; and Legacy's cards also tend to go for the jugular and portray employment of brute strength rather than cleverness, guile, or knowledge. Other off-brand versions of Superman tend to embody similar attributes, or in some cases to play with them and deconstruct their implications. So these, rather then the actual details of Superman's biography, appearance, or exact set of powers, might better serve as definitional of the "Superman archetype".

Justice is restored, but something tells me it's not the last we will see of this rogue.

The concept of an archetype was first introduced by psychologist Carl Jung as a description of deep aspects of the human unconscious personality that drive our behaviour. Jung thought that reflections of these divisions of the self showed up in mythology and repeated in every culture's traditional stories, a concept that was further codified by Joseph Campbell in his concept of the "hero's journey". Superhero comics, among other genres, have often been described as modern mythology, and the concept of the archetype has been applied to such repeatedly reproduced sets of characteristics as we have been discussing. There is something about Superman, about Batman, about mad scientists like Baron Blade that calls to something deep in our psyche, and that is why we keep endlessly reinventing them. Superman himself is just one version of a character type that is as old as human civilization -- a Galahad, a Cu Chulainn, a Siegfried, an Arjuna; a paladin, a carrier of a culture's deepest values and a reflection of what it desires itself to be. Superman embodies Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and Legacy by implication stands for similar values. There is a little Superman in all of us, appealing to the angels of our better nature, whispering to us that righteousness can triumph over evil, that the innocent can be protected from the predators of the world, if we can only apply martial force in a just and measured way. And that is why, although Superman the Last Son of Krypton and his iconic "S" may be copyrighted intellectual property, the idea that is embodied in Superman, in Legacy, and in a hundred other heroes never can be. If one expression is locked up by a corporation eager to capitalize on its popularity, another will inevitably arise. The archetype is the common property of all humanity, an expression of the collective unconscious that cannot die, that cannot be owned, and that cannot be controlled.