Actually hang on I have an old comment about this.

Omni-Man is a Superman deconstruction. He’s a criticism of the concept… not the archetype. Invincible is not Red Son, giving truth-justice-yadda-yadda Kal-El a different perspective and a sharper moral calculus. This character is not a “single point of departure” what-if for a beloved hero. He is an actively malicious tyrant who has been mistaken for a protector.

Contrast this with Homelander, who is unambiguously a character designed to ask, what if Superman was kind of a d-bag? His reputation is fake from the get-go and becomes a facade maintained exclusively for other people’s ends. He’s gradually internalizing that there are no rules for him. He’s obviously not a good guy, in any sense, but he’s not a megalomaniac who’d punch an alien planet in half to keep Earth for himself. He just wants to creep on women and get his dad’s approval. He’s an amoral dickweed surrounded by manipulative frauds, and there is vanishingly little restraint on his juvenile whims.

The midpoint is probably Doctor Manhattan. He’s not saddled with civic responsibility or lost in his own hype. He basically trips down some stairs and lands in demigod status. He keeps going with American interests because that’s his prior identity, but as he slowly loses touch with it, he doesn’t care about ruling Earth any more than you care about bending an ant colony to your will.

These are three distinct takes on the Superman mythos.

Homelander reminds us that people with power tend to be bastards, because the ability to act without comeuppance is morally corrosive. (And pursuit of power is rarely virtuous.) He is a criticism of society - novel, I know - and specifically our desire to give some individual power and defend his use of it, no matter what, because he’s our guy. That kneejerk tribalism is innate. The horrific abuse and propaganda that grow out of it are a hell of our own creation. Homelander is an argument that Superman would turn off his body-cam.

Omni-Man is more like “be careful what you wish for.” If we have one dude who can save us from anything, how the hell do we save ourselves from him? This is obviously not a criticism of Kal-El or Clark Kent. It’s not a mirror to any Superman stories except the ones where he goes crazy and we have to outsmart an unstoppable force. Nah - Omni-man is a criticism of power itself. His backstory shamelessly copies Superman, but he’s Godzilla with facial hair. A walking existential threat.

Doctor Manhattan is Alan Moore explaining that superheroes are dumb and everybody should stop writing or reading them. (Which makes his role in creating Omni-Man pretty funny.) People who’d act like this are horrific beyond the point of even lurid fascination, or else their characterization is complete nonsense that won’t hold up to scrutiny. Your Batman archetypes in-real-life would be ruthless maniacs or callous dweebs. Devil-may-care gun-slingers have always been rapey sociopaths. And if someone had the power to go anywhere in the universe and see the future of every atom around them while standing on the surface of a dying star, what the fuck do they care about the hysterical drama of some pale blue dot?

Or for a weirder comparison, Homelander is the Twilight Zone episode “The Little People,” Omni-Man is “It’s A Good Life,” and Doctor Manhattan is The Scary Door.