Fun fact! This is what's called an 'expy', a character that's very clearly intended to be or evoke one character, but has a unique identity.
They get used for a variety of reasons, and a lot more original characters than you'd expect are expys.
Sometimes, it's because you want to use a character that you don't have the rights to. Marvel's Squadron Supreme, for instance, is a whole pack of Justice League expys, usually to serve as placeholder justice leaguers for a faux-crossover fight with the Avengers, (and once to tell an amazing JLA story that DC didn't have the guts to, and every time they've tried, they've missed the point, but I digress-) It can be done either affectionately (The whole of Venture Brothers, characters like Reptar) , to ride tailcoats (all the SNK not-Ryu/Kens), as a "take that" to an idea the author derides (Dan Hibiki from SF2 in response to the SNK not-Ryus. Also everything about the Boys), or because the author used to have access to them, left the company, and rather than change to a new cast they just make Youngblood.
Sometimes it's because you do own the rights to the character, but you don't want to use them for the story in question. DC bought the Charlton cast of characters: Blue Beetle, Captain ATom, the Question, etc and Alan Moore turned in a groundbreaking outline for an inaugural story for them. Editorial, however, didn't want to take a whole cast of characters they'd just bought and have them all dead or psychologically broken at the end of their introduction tale, and so that's how we got Watchmen. Walter B. Gibson, creator of the Shadow did this when he created the Avenger, because if anyone was going to make money doing ripoffs of the Shadow, it was him.
Arguably, Marvel's Speedball was a Spider-Man expy when he started off, only he was an expy of high-school age Peter Parker, which the comic version of Peter hadn't been for literal real world decades.
And then there's the 'evolved beyond' take mentioned above, which in the wild usually manifests as what I'd call a "druthers expy", (for the non theatre kids, 'druthers is a shortening of "I'd rather-" made famous by L'il Abner. there's a whole song about it.) The main thing that differentes this from the first type can be boiled down to not being allowed to do a crossover, and no being allowed to do a severe reboot.
"Man, Dial-H-for-Hero was a fun comic, but I'd rather it have been cooler and more coherent" Is, I'm almost completely certain, how we got Ben 10, even if its the concept being expy'd more than the actual character.
I have /so many/ druthers expys.
There's other approaches, and there's a lot of of mixed situations and blurred edges, but it's a proud tradition that goes back literal centuries. So grab your blorbo, mash 'em into a new shape, and roll with it.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
