Nighthawk, Marvel’s Batman Clone, Appears Oct. 1969

If you were a little kid in 1969, something pretty incredible happened on the last panel of the last page of the comic book Avengers #69 (Oct. 1969 publication date which means it probably hit the newsstand around August or September): A team that looked a lot like DC’s Justice League of America appeared to face of against Marvel’s Avengers. Nighthawk (above) was Marvel’s copyright-free clone of DC’s Batman.

Dr. Spectrum was the Green Lantern clone, Hyperion was the Superman clone, and Whizzer was a Flash clone. This is as close to a true Avengers/JLA meetup that we would see for a long time. The actual JLA/Avengers – Avengers/JLA mini-series would have to wait for 2003-2004 publication dates.

The Squadron Sinister, as this bad-guy JLA clone team was called, hit the covers of the next issue (#70). They proved so popular that a good-guy alternate universe version of the team called the Squadron Supreme was later created and allowed for stories that were essentially a darker version of the then relatively bright DC universe stories.