It sure seems like it- Superman has Bizarro and Ultraman and Batman has Owlman, Wrath and Bat-zarro, for example. I think an evil doppelganger is a good stand-by if you are looking for an arch-nemesis for your hero and have trouble coming up with something more original- would you agree?|||It's an old plot device, but not as common as some people might think.
The problem is that the whole "evil twin" business really only works if your original hero is a complete goody-two-shoes on some level. Not everyone's evil twin ends up being completely scary or all that compelling--one of the big moments in the Star Trek "Dark Mirror" episode (original series) happens when you find out that Dark Mirror Spock isn't all that different from his "good" counterpart--logic is logic after all. Likewise, more recently in _Blackest Night_, you have twisted, "evil" versions of lots of dead characters. Evil Zombie Martian Manhunter works--ditto with Evil Zombie Aquaman.
But Blue Beetle? Not so much. The closer the character is to morally gray on one side, the closer he will be to the middle on the other. Usually. There are exceptions, but they generally tend to involve characters who have either been seriously tweaked in the head (read: relentlessly brainwashed) and/or characters who have gone through a traumatic, horrifying experience.
And honestly? It takes some work to pull that off. An author would have to do some writing from a character-driven viewpoint and do it for a _while_ to seriously pull it off. It's not the sort of thing you can neatly stuff into some company-mandated "event" that fits in six neat issues so you can have One More Collected Tradebook to Sell (tm). It requires character work and maybe even subplots--not that anyone writing comic books lately has one clue what I'm babbling about, do they?
Sorry about the tangent though, point is: Usually it takes a seriously, almost obnoxiously "good" character to actually make their "dark mirror/evil twin" counterpart compelling as character. Or....even to make the thing readable as joke character (as per Bizarro/Batzarro). Characters who are more realistic morally generally don't do as well with this treatment.|||Red Hood is currently Jason Todd (former Robin, Boy Hostage, returned from the dead) and is a nemesis, not a doppelganger.
Not all superheroes have them and they are a bit of a contrived device. I feel that they are used more in DC than in Marvel - however they aren't innocent as Marvel tend to go for the 'good guy suddenly turns bad' thing instead.
I don't think it is so much about having a convenient villain, it is more a way of seeing a mirror image of your hero - a 'what if?' scenario and then pits the two versions against each other in a (theoretically) even fight.|||well with doppelgangers in comic books it shows a fight between a hero and villian on even ground
but there are some others like flash and reverse flash and green lantern corps and the sinestro corps that have some really decent fights and some doppels had a unquie history like the red hood with batman|||I think it's an age old plot device...
not only do you have the Mirror image/through the glass darkly take on the hero but you have the 'fair fight' factor
also the doubles allow you to explore the Hero's choices and origins
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