Eventually, if they're around long enough, every superhero will meet an identical double on the cover of their comic books. I've always been fond of "double covers", dating all the way back to Amazing Spider-Man #149 (1975), one of the first Spidey comics I bought from the ol' creaky spinner rack.
However, when it comes to meeting their double on covers, nobody (not even Superman or Batman) can touch the sheer, crazy number of double Wonder Woman covers. Boasting a mindblowing sixteen covers from across the decades, Wonder Woman (for whatever reason) met more multiples than any other superhero in comic book history. Most of those covers were published during the 1950's and early 1960's, so perhaps the armchair psychologists among us see a theory there.
Well, whatever the reason, let's start seeing double (or even triple) with the Multiple Wonder Woman Cover Gallery.
P.S. Wonder Woman is also the champion of shrinking covers...so be sure to figure that into your theories as well, armchair psychologists!
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I have speculated in the past that having created these awesomely powered people, writers and editors were somewhat stumped as to how to challenge them, and hit on the solution of using doubles. It's my recollection that there were at least a couple Journey into Mystery covers with Thor facing off against Thor.
Incidentally, there are even more "multiple Wonder Woman" covers if you count the oddball ones from the early 1960s where Wonder Woman shares the cover space with her teenage self Wonder Girl (not Donna Troy) and her toddler self Wonder Tot. Very weird stuff.
Posted by: Pat Curley | February 05, 2009 at 01:09 PM
I always thought that characters fighting an evil twin of themselves was staid and boring. What's more interesting is when said evil twin isn't just an evil duplicate, but more like an imitation with something fundamentally different, more like a foil than an actual duplicate. Bizarro is one of my favorite villains because of that. He's not just "evil Superman," he's a tragic Frankenstein's Monster version of Superman.
Posted by: Chris Mullen | February 05, 2009 at 01:39 PM
Oh, I love that kind of stuff too, Chris. Check this out for the full rundown.
Posted by: Mark Engblom | February 05, 2009 at 04:28 PM
I think Superman must come in a pretty close second, if you count the number of times Superman faced down Superboy (of the Superman of Earth 2 or Earth 52 or whatever).
Posted by: Dr. OTR | February 06, 2009 at 10:02 AM