Just because you've created one masterpiece doesn't mean everything you touch is going to be gold (we're looking at you, seasons 2,3 and 4 of Heroes). For further proof, just take a look at the real and grossly ill-conceived follow-ups to some of these beloved classics.

6 After Captain America: Fighting American

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Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were true visionaries: They created Captain America in late 1940, a full year before the U.S. got involved in World War II, and they had him punching Hitler in the face as early as March 1941. When Marvel Comics put out the first issue of Captain America, the character became an overnight sensation. Simon and Kirby were immediately flooded by fan mail and even death threats from Nazi sympathizers.

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So when Marvel relaunched the character in 1953 without Simon or Kirby's involvement, they called bullshit. Similar to the creators of Superman, they felt they had been swindled and decided to do something about it. Unlike Superman's creators, they didn't even try to come up with a new character - they simply did a Captain America rip-off at another company. This time Simon and Kirby owned the copyright, so by their own admission, they "were determined to make the public forget about Captain America." Here's what they came up with:

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The Failure:

Fighting American's origin story reads a lot like an extended sketch for The Colbert Report: a brave newscaster volunteers for a government experiment after his war hero brother is murdered by communists. The story plots were literally inspired by Senator McCarthy's anti-communist agenda: