[Snowflakian]

It was originally going to be Dial H for Hero, a DC comic, but CN wanted something they could cash in better on, so they opted to commission an original work with the same idea from Man of Action. That's what created Ben 10. Man of Action are former comic book writers/artists themselves so they nod a lot of the stuff throughout. Most heavily Jack Kirby, but you can see references from both marvel and DC in tons of it.

Very few talk about this origin, but when Ben 10 started it was all everyone talked about. Think of it as similiar to Once Upon a Time and Fables. CN even briefly had the rights for Dial H, but scrapped it because of some royalties snafu while they had JL/U.