Favorite Public Domain Characters?

I really couldn't find the right section to post this as it's more a General Discussion topic so I hope no one minds.

Well, I was just thinking, what current Public Domain characters, whether villains or super heroes, do you really like? Whether it is based on names, powers, origins, etc., whatever your reasoning, that's fine but I'm curious as to which characters are the most liked.

If you can, post a reply with a list of the names of the characters. You don't have to give your reasons why but if you want to, that's great! I like some characters simply because of their names, but I'm weird that way!!

Just want to have fun here, so shoot away......

As a note, I was going to use these characters in stories;

Atoman: The atomic Superman. Some intresting Cold War interaction.
Black Death: He has alot of potential.
Black Venus: Also alot of potential
Bronze Terror: I love this guy.
The Claw: As I said in the Astro-Man thread, I think he could be a Darkseid/Thanos.
Wonder Man: I love the GA/Fleisher Superman and what better proxy than WM?

Just a sampling.

~~Yzz

From comics:
Black Terror
Daredevil
Green Lama
Fighting Yank
Hydroman
Claw
Man of War

From books:
John Carter of Mars
Sherlock Holmes

I'm sure I can think of many others, those are just the ones that popped into my head immediately.

My favorites are the ones I'm posting on the Free Universe site.

I think my all-time favorite is the Green Sorceress from Blue Bolt. Blue Bolt himself was kinda cheesy, but the story really had a rich sense of mythology to it, and the Sorceress seems like the most complicated character of the entire Golden Age.

Other favorites include:

Fighting Yank, Amazing Man, The Arrow, Silver Streak, Daredevil, Captain Battle, Spider Queen, The Shark, Mighty Man, Wildfire, Phantom Girl, The Shield, Blue Beetle, Black Terror, Miss Masque, Jill Trent, The Little Wise Guys, Green Lama and Yarko The Great. I like a lot of the villains too: Cobra, Lady Serpent, Clown, Great Question, The Claw, White Terror, Iron Jaw, Sniffer, The Bolt and Baron Doom. Those all seem to have interesting story potential.

Most of the "Centaur Heroes" are favorites. This comes from being a big fan of Malibu's Protectors series.

All the Fletcher Hanks characters only because of his artwork, which I really enjoy looking at.

The Heroes of Rural Home (Blue Circle, Steel Fist, Green Turtle, The Prankster, Maureen Marine, Jun-Gal, Crash Kid and The Judge). Not sure "why" beyond the fact that they're relatively obscure and weren't around very long.

Other favorites:
Duke of Darkness
Cat-Man
Yellowjacket
Blue Beetle
Nightmare - cool 1st costume but lousy 2nd costume
Dr Occult/Dr Mystic

For something really off-the-wall ...
Atomic Mouse - For a "funny animal" superhero, he's got a pretty cool costume.

bchat: funny you mentioned Atomic Mouse...he's a great character that I actually got to work on in the late '90's. A company called Shanda Fantasy Arts published a few new comics of AM. I actually got to talk and stuff to AM's creator Vic Fago.

But aside from that...I think Black Terror is a fantastic character...one of the greatest costumes on a super hero in my book.

dann

My favorites of the open source type characters:
Jenny Everywhere
Outworlder (I may be biased)
Jackpott (I may be biased)
plus Astro-Man seems very promising.

Haha...it's a good thing to be proud of your own creations Mike. It means you care about them. I happen to like them as well. Your series has been very cool and I am still waiting to see what happens to the President now that Iron Jaw and Golden Mane have him. I need more reference material to add the mysterious Golden Mane to the Free Universe.

Yeah, I need to flesh out the character more. He was intended to be a kind of behind the scenes "big bad" type, but after the first story I hit serious writer's block. I hit the same type of writer's block in this second story. I have an ending, I just need to figure out how to get there. I think Astro-Man may be able to help me get there.

That would be great. A Shifter/Astro-Man/Outworlder team up would be really cool. Like the Avengers of Open-Source characters.

Some of my favorite Golden Age heroes:

Airboy: A character who embodies that old-fashioned, two-fisted pulp kind of cool, but has enough vulnerability and personal development to make him interesting as a character. He also has a great storytelling engine, with a lot of really cool enemies and easily the most complex and interesting history of all the Golden Age heroes. The war with the rats, the immortal Mr. Zzed, the ancestor who fought against the Reign of Terror, Misery, and above all the romance with Valkyrie. There's a whole lot there to work with. Also, as a Catholic, I loved the whole raised by monks angle.

Cat-Man: He has an interesting hook and a cool costume. Also, I like cats. I see him as a cross between Batman, Tarzan and Wolverine.

Black Terror: Obviously enough. The thing about the Black Terror is that he has a really cool name and costume but no really interesting central premise, so people keep bringing him back and putting him in completely different roles. We've seen him as gang-busting FBI agent, as Batman-esque dark vigilante, as pirate warrior. But no one has really built on the truly bizarre, proto-Silver Age-y stuff from the very last issues, completely forgotten until GAC brought them back to the light of day. What would Alan Moore have done with the character if he knew he had a miniature robotic duplicate of himself?

Green Sorceress: Like Argosail, I think the Blue Bolt himself is pretty generic but the world he is part of is very cool, a sort of Buck Rogers-esque underground hidden land as filtered through the imagination of Simon and Kirby just as they were really beginning to take off. (I could be wrong, but I think an early issue of Blue Bolt had the first ever example of Kirby Krackle.) The Green Sorceress was one of the more memorable villains of the Golden Age. She's not unlike a female version of Namor, a passionate and proud ruler with unpredictable loyalties. Certainly the semi-evil female ruler of a lost race who falls in love with a hero from the outside world was a standard pulp character type, but the Green Sorceress was one of the more imaginative and better-designed versions. Also, what's with that sword she's always carrying with her that she never uses? Maybe it's just a ceremonial sword, or maybe it's a powerful magical artifact of some sort, the Sword Never to be Drawn.

Marto: Another Blue Bolt villain. Marto was basically the Golden Age MODOK. Nuff said.

Black Cat: She's a very fun character, who inhabits a very distinctive setting (Golden Age Hollywood) which could lead to some unusual stories. I love the way Lee Elias draws her in her own series. He has a real knowledge of martial arts and her fighting style seems different from the usual boxing-influenced superhero fighting. And she always comes across as someone who's having an enormous amount of fun doing her thing, even by Golden Age standards. And she's a readhead.

Fantom of the Fair: A very creepy and mysterious hero (if you can call him that--he was pretty brutal even by GA standards, to the point of having a torture chamber in his basement!) who we know next to nothing about. He stalks the World's Fair and he's possibly immortal and connected to the vikings. Huh? Making sense of this character seems like an interesting challenge. Also, I love the full face-mask visual, even though he doesn't seem to be able to see. As with Black Panther and Dr. Fate, giving him a half-mask was a mistake.

Amazing-Man: The Bill Everett Amazing-Man stories are some of my favorites of the Golden Age. The story where the Great Question possessed him and transformed him into a monster was, well, amazing. He had a really cool background and an intriguing dynamic with his archenemy, which would be interesting to explore in terms of more complex modern characterization. I already mentioned how much I love the Bronze Age, and Amazing-Man seems like the kind of character who would have fit the Bronze Age perfectly. His background as the child of a hidden city would give him a strong spirituality and an intense sense of alienation from the world he was sent to protect. He would be divided against himself because of the seed of darkness that the Great Question implanted in him.

Actually, Green Sorceress drew her sword at least twice. Of course she generally lets her army fight her battles, but you're right, I would have loved to have seen her actually swing the sword at someone. I plan to update Marto on the Free Universe and make him a little more MODOK like.

I'm really just starting to delve into the world of PD characters, so I have a few characters and a lot more that I'm intrigued by and want to learn more about. Here's my list:

Fav Heroes from Movies: The Copperhead (from The Mysterious Dr. Satan) and Commando Cody (from Radar Men from the Moon).
Fav Villain from Movies: The Crimson Ghost

Fav Heroes from Comics: Airboy (loved Chuck Dixon's update of the character), Amazing Man (cool character and I love the iconic heroes), Blue Beetle (I love the pulps, and he always seemed like a combination of pulp and comic book hero. I've actually liked every character by that name except for DC's newest "cosmic bug" version), Thesson, Son of the Gods (no costume, but a ring that gives him super strength ... again, very pulp), Space Smith & Diana (love sci-fi), Mysta of the Moon (sexy and sciency. What else do you need?).
Fav Villain from Comics: The Claw (and what you guys have said about Green Sorceress intrigues me).

Characters I'm intrigued by: Atoman, Purple Tigress, Blue Bolt, Black Fury, The Raven, Diana the Huntress, Hooded Wasp & his team, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Madame Strange, Skyman, Moon Girl, Dr. Mystic, Pat Parker: War Nurse, Green Lama, Will o'the Wisp, Phantom Magician, Yankee Girl, Lance Hale, Jet Powers.

The Grim Reaper be da bomb. Also, any of the characters listed on my PDSH page, under roygbiv666.

Here are my favorite public domain characters:
Both magnos
Both ravens
the hangman
mister justice
spider widow
daredevil
the black terror
the claw
silver streak
the clown
the eagle
the flame(fox)
the green lama
amazing man
miss masque