I've been going through the comics at http://comicbookplus.com which is a repository of comic books that have fallen into the public domain. Now some of the characters (eg. Blue Beetle and Captain Marvel) even though their original publications might be in the public domain are still owned trademarks as their original publisher was bought by another publisher which still uses them. Others are just complete orphans as their publisher went out of business and nobody bought their catalogue.

Reading through these old comic books can be a real chore, not just because the pages have deteriorated or because the printing was simply crap quality to begin with but because they're very, very bad. These are comics from a time when comics were strictly for kids and the effort put into storytelling was very minimal. Lots of non-sequitur detective logic, lack lustre dialogue, and very minimalist artwork.

I thought it would be kind of fun to read through some of the books and see if I can't find some poor orphaned character that could use a fresh retelling. Someone who just didn't have what it takes to become a Batman or a Captain America but has a spark of something interesting to them that deserves a revisit. There are a lot of weird superheros of old to consider. There's Fantom of the Fair, a superhero whose bailiwick is the 1939 World's Fair. There's Speed Centaur, a centaur who lives in a cave who has 8 times the strength of a human, super speed, and cold resistance (as he originally lived in the arctic until an earthquake made him the last of his kind). That's a pretty quirky character for sure. And there's a whole slew of space/air pilots with high tech flying machines who eventually faded into obscurity. While some of them were a nice mix of quirkiness and interesting possibility the one I'd choose as my own personal reboot candidate would be this glorious bastard right here.

Dirk The Demon.

Who is Dirk the Demon you ask? He's a 12 year old boy (whose hair will change from black to blond for no real reason) in the 24th century who likes to treasure hunt and save Space Princesses from kidnappers. He has three friends, Laddie, a ginger with a brush cut, Reggad (called Reg for short) who is always shirtless and Teddy, a slightly more feminine looking version of Dirk whose hair stays blond all the time. Dirk's father is Baron Cay, the noble who presumably is an important lord of some space fiefdom. The boys have no super powers but they do all carry long daggers and make no mistake they will stab the shit out of you with no regrets.

Dirk was created by Bill Everett (who also created Namor the Sub-Mariner) when he was working as a freelancer for Funnies Inc (Centaur Publishing) in the 1930s/40s. As near as I can tell there were only two Dirk the Demon stories published (which were then republished in other volumes) and this is part of what for me makes him the perfect candidate for a reboot because it's not like he has a deep lore you have to be respectful of. He's just a kid in the 24th century who likes to adventure with his pals for treasure and stab the shit out of people and he's the son of a powerful Space Baron so people don't get too pissed at him when he does things like steal a spaceship to go treasure hunting.

This is the forgotten comic book character I'd like to bring back. A spoiled rich kid and his friends having freewheeling adventures in space, stabbing hobos for their space gold and getting away with everything because "do you know who my dad is". Yes, much space stabbing and adventure with some consequence free crime.

I think I should reboot this character.