Dude. You totally stole that...

[DrNewGod]

Superhero comics have borrowed A Lot. Hell, Superman swiped from at least three sources.

So what are some of the most obvious homages?

I give you the odd coincidence between Kirby's Destroyer

images.jpg

and The Day The Earth Stood Still's Gort.

sci-fi_stats_gort_the_robot.jpg

[Kirby101]

Though Kirby was a magnet for cultural reference in his work, I doubt that Gort was the inspiration for the Destroyer. More likely the Golum or other myths.

[Javasaurus]

When I look at the Destroyer, I'm inclined to think suits of armor from antiquity as being more an influence than Gort.

[Güicho]

Superhero comics have borrowed A Lot. Hell, Superman swiped from at least three sources.

As did Batman....

Jerry Siegel: "I loved The Mark of Zorro, and I'm sure that had some influence on me." ..."When writing the script, I had Douglass Fairbanks very much in mind in the athletic stunts that he did too, so the influence of Douglass Fairbanks was not only in the art but in the visual action."

Joe Shuster - "I was a great fan of Douglas Fairbanks, and so was Jerry and I tried to use his stance, the way Douglass Fairbanks looked, ...with his hands on his hips, in Robin Hood and Mark of Zorro, in all those he had those marvelous attitude..." " [His costume] was inspired by the costume pictures that Fairbanks did: they greatly influenced us. He did The Mark of Zorro, and Robin Hood, and a marvelous one called The Black Pirate - Fairbanks would swing on ropes very much like Superman flying... the feeling of action as he was flying or jumping or leaping - a flowing cape would give it movement.

Bill Finger - "Batman was a combination of Douglas Fairbanks [who played Zorro] and Sherlock Holmes."

Bob Kane -"Zorro’s use of a mask to conceal his identity as Don Diego gave me the idea of giving Batman a secret identity…Bruce Wayne would be a man of means who put on a façade of being effete. Zorro rode a black horse called Tornado and would enter a cave and exit from a grandfather clock in the living room. The bat-cave was inspired by this cave in Zorro. I didn't want Batman to be a Superhero with superpowers…So I made Batman an ordinary human being; he is just an athlete who has the physical prowess of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., who was my all-time favorite hero in the movies.”

More like inspired, not that it's a secret or anything since DC has even worked Zorro into his origin.
Of course the costume is more Phantom derivative, and Kane and Finger just completely swiped a Shadow story, and just worked their "new" character into it.
They really just took from the best of what was out there.

[Güicho]

1948

https://i.imgflip.com/35c1jx.gif


1962




Edit:
Cue someone citing it obviously predates that, yeah no kidding it was a common saying. You totally missed the point.
In other news young man moving to the big city to become reporter also predates it, wow no kidding, so what!?.
Guess what, Stan Lee didn't invent these things, and first apply them to Superheroes, he borrowed too, get over it LOL!

[Kirby101]

Wikipedia:

The origins of the phrase pre-date its use in Spider-Man, though its exact origins are unknown. In a "Plan de travail, de surveillance et de correspondance, proposé par le Comité de Salut Public aux Représentans du Peuple, députés prés des Armées de la République" of the French National Convention in 1793,[9] we can find a sentence about the representatives saying "ils doivent envisager qu'une grande responsabilité est la suite inséparable d'un grand pouvoir", which could translate by "they must contemplate that a great responsibility is inseparable byproduct from a great power." In 1817, British Member of Parliament William Lamb is recorded saying, "the possession of great power necessarily implies great responsibility."[10] In 1906, Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office Winston Churchill said, "Where there is great power there is great responsibility", even indicating that it was already a cultural maxim invoked toward government at the time.[11][12][13]

[Iron Maiden]

Though Kirby was a magnet for cultural reference in his work, I doubt that Gort was the inspiration for the Destroyer. More likely the Golum or other myths.

I agree. IIRC there was a storyteller in his family. Don't recall if it was his mother or some other relative, that would pass along these stories from "the old country".

[Phoenixx9]

Superhero comics have borrowed A Lot. Hell, Superman swiped from at least three sources.

So what are some of the most obvious homages?

I give you the odd coincidence between Kirby's Destroyer

images.jpg

and The Day The Earth Stood Still's Gort.

sci-fi_stats_gort_the_robot.jpg

Great thread idea!

I have often noticed things that were "borrowed" as original ideas.

An old movie Wasp Woman seems to have elements that were used for Janet van Dyne, The Wasp.

[A Small Talent For War]

Superhero comics have borrowed A Lot. Hell, Superman swiped from at least three sources.

So what are some of the most obvious homages?

I give you the odd coincidence between Kirby's Destroyer

images.jpg

and The Day The Earth Stood Still's Gort.

sci-fi_stats_gort_the_robot.jpg

I think Kirby and Stan Lee got a lot from the popular monster movies at the time. THE THING, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, THE FLY and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. If you go back to the original Captain Marvel series (drawn by Gene Colon using Kirby's style, I believe), Mar Vell is essentially a superhero version of Klaatu the alien from The Day The Earth stood still. He's sent to Earth because the FF defeated one of their nigh-invincible Sentry Robots which are essentially their version of GORT. He appears and then takes on an Earthman identity to observe the human race and determine what sort of threat it may pose to the Kree empire.

In the Amazing Colossal Man, the hero of that story is caught by a blast from a new type of nuclear weapon when he leaves the trench to save the passengers of a plane that accidentally flew into the test area. He grows into a giant monster and becomes angry that the doctors can't cure his condition and goes on a rampage through nearby Las Vegas (which really was close enough to above-ground nuclear test sites that casino hotel guests could watch them from the outdoor bars by the swimming pools). That is a pretty obvious influence on The Hulk.

Ka-Zar wasn't so much of a rip-off as a resurrection of the 1930's Ka-Zar, David Rand, the child of millionaires who is lost in an archaic jungle in Africa. No dinosaurs in this jungle like when he is republished in Marvel comics in the 60's in the Savage Land. Obviously, he was a rip-off of Tarzan. Naturally, it's easy to see how Danny Rand the Iron Fist's origin was inspired by David Rand, but with the influence of Kung Fu and Shangri-La instead of Tarzan.

Everyone can point to Hercules, John Carter of Mars, Doc Savage and Philip Wylie's Gladiator as influences on Superman. However, the Superman as we know him was really fleshed out more by the radio show and Mort Weisinger's work on the character in the Silver Age. Doc Savage himself was likely inspired by another Wylie novel called The Savage Gentleman.

However, I think the connection between the Pulp Heroes, Universal monsters of the 40's and the 50's and 60's B-Movie monsters and Marvel's superheroes could fill a nice documentary.
The Hulk = Mr Hyde + Frankenstein's Monster + The Amazing Colossal Man
Spider-Man = The Fly + Teenage Werewolf + Superboy
Captain Marvel = The Day The Earth Stood Still + This Island Earth + Flash Gordon
Fantastic Four has a whole lot of B-Movie and Pulp SF influences

What's interesting about the X-Men is that there was a whole sub-genre of Mutant Science Fiction in the pulp magazines at the time with John W. Campbell the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog) insisting that Mutants always be portrayed as benevolent while other writers like Philip K Dick wanted to portray mutants as just as dangerous and emotionally deranged as people. PK Dick's Psi-Man, Heal My Child, A World of Talent, The Golden Man as well as Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human and AE Van Vogt's Slan must've influenced the X-Men.

[Jim Kelly]

Ka-Zar wasn't so much of a rip-off as a resurrection of the 1930's Ka-Zar, David Rand, the child of millionaires who is lost in an archaic jungle in Africa. No dinosaurs in this jungle like when he is republished in Marvel comics in the 60's in the Savage Land. Obviously, he was a rip-off of Tarzan. Naturally, it's easy to see how Danny Rand the Iron Fist's origin was inspired by David Rand, but with the influence of Kung Fu and Shangri-La instead of Tarzan.

Some credit should probably go to H. Rider Haggard who wrote KING SOLOMON'S MINES and SHE in the 1880s.