Flashback Friday: Billy Numerous (and Everywhere Man?)

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: Billy Numerous!

I figured since this week's main post was about Teen Titans, the Flashback Friday should be too! And I think this is a good way to go about it in general, so I'll try to keep it up. Won't make any promises; some weeks will be easier to do that with than others. But it'll always be on my mind. Anyway, let's get to it.

Billy Numerous first appeared on Teen Titans as a background character in the season 3 premiere, "Deception" (August 2004); his first full appearance was season 4's "Overdrive"(June 2005).  He's a student at the HIVE Academy - and therefore a villain - who can multiply himself...or divide himself, depending on how you look at it. Based on his costume, he clearly thinks of it as division.

He first appeared in comics in Catwoman #78 (April 2008) as a thug for a villain called The Thief that Catwoman had a personal vendetta against. He appeared again over the next two issues and then was never seen again. (Note: this image is from issue 80.)

...if only it were that simple. See, even when I first included Billy in the Teen Titans Super Post, I was unsure if he really counted. See, there's another duplicating character who wears red and white that he could just as easily be: Everywhere Man.

Everywhere Man debuted in The Batman episode of the same name (November 2006). Bruce Wayne's friend John Marlowe invented a duplicator called the Quantex and used it on himself, then his duplicate stole his identity and created more copies of himself to become an art thief. As you can see, Everywhere Man's outfit looks a bit closer to the comics character than Billy Numerous does.

But then, once I was able to look at the actual comics themselves, a new wrinkle appeared. Two of this three appearances do name him, and they don't call him Billy Numerous or Everywhere Man. They call him Repro.

So now I have a choice to make: is he Billy Numerous or Everywhere Man? Is he both, or is he somehow neither and it's just a coincidence that there are THREE duplicators dressed in red and white running around various versions of the DC Universe? This is what I've decided: I was right all along and he is, in fact, a combination of the two characters. And since he's a combination, the writer gave him a new name to not unduely favor one character over the other. His outfit is also a mixture of the two characters, with the mask of Billy Numerous and the stripe of Everywhere Man.

If you have information that refutes this, please let me know. Until then, no one can tell me otherwise (including the writer, who I asked years ago)!