The funny thing about contested intellectual property is that often, it doesn’t stay dormant forever. In the 1930s, it was unlikely that the creators of Blue Beetle or the Peacemaker ever dreamed a century later that their character would be a big-screen trailblazer. A decades-long joke in the comic industry was ‘only Bucky stays dead,’ referring to Captain America’s century-long corpse sidekick. The punchline to the joke – of course – being Bucky resurrected as the Winter Soldier in the long-running Avengers and Captain America franchises.

Today, we’re taking a look at several curious properties that may or may not prove profitable for their owners if resurrected. However, will they ever return?

Ren & Stimpy
MTV Networks

Once a guaranteed hit for Nickelodeon and television kids (as well as ’90s stoners), the behind-the-scenes drama of creator John K. and his infamous entanglement with underage girls led to the downfall of these once-beloved characters. But that’s not the whole story.

The problem with Ren & Stimpy is that it was too popular – and much like Michael Jackson – was perhaps given a few more chances than it deserved. After being ostracized by Hollywood writ large, John K. fled sexual misconduct allegations by Katie Rice and Robyn Byrd to the cable network Spike. Here, the series keeled over and died.

Marred by horrible animation, late episodes (again – a problem that plagued the series a decade earlier on Nickelodeon), and unfunny episodes, the soon-to-be-bankrupt Spike network ultimately swept the entire fiasco under the rug.

Related: Why Disney’s Charter Dispute Could’ve Cost the Company Billions

Alan Moore’s Miracle Man
Marvel Comics

Another complicated property, Miracle Man, has an origin suspiciously similar to a now-popular DC property. At age 14, a reclusive boy believed that an Astro-scientist named Dr. Borghelm had discovered a formula to unlock the universe, thereby bestowing upon him the power to transform into the superhero Miracleman when he uttered the word ‘Kimota.’ Wow.

To further blur the lines, Miracle Man wasn’t even the character’s original name. Marvel Man was an ancient property from the pulp days of noir fiction. Previously, in 1982, the franchise was rebooted in a comic anthology called ‘Warrior,’ and the character was later renamed Miracleman in 1985. This convoluted situation led to Eclipse imprints purchasing relegated shares owned by the Skinn and Leach company, with the publisher believing they owned 2/3rds of the property and Alan Moore the subsequent 1/3rd. Frankly, ridiculous.

Since a decade and a half ago, in 2009, the appellate copyright ownership of the property has been on license from the original owner, Anglo, to Marvel Comics, who occasionally reproduced portions of the antique material under the original Marvel Man pulp imprint. Would comic fanatics potentially see Miracle Man on the screen or in serial, streaming form? Unlikely. But given the almost uncomfortable similarity to the Captain Marvel / Shazam / Black Adam franchises – would they really even want to?

Marvel’s Malibu Ultraverse Characters
Marvel Comics

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, certain comic companies went bankrupt and were forced to sell their intellectual properties – i.e., superheroes and villains – to bigger houses. Marvel and DC (Detective Comics) are undoubtedly the two largest companies left standing after the comic world shake-up.

Marvel and DC are very different comic universes and comic companies, and not only do they sport varying characters, but they also – as corporations – employ different philosophies. It may surprise some comic fans and long-time MovieWeb connoisseurs to learn that Marvel and DC share one thing in common: they both purchased entire comic universes.

Here is where the similarities end, however, as DC opted to re-boot several long-dead and comatose Image characters such as the WildC.A.T.s, Backlash, and other leftover properties like Stormwatch, Fairchild from Gen13, Mother One from Wetworks, and miscellaneous Youngblood properties such as (ugh) Shaft.

While these may or may not have been successes (see the incredibly underwhelming WildC.A.T.s reboot), DC had the foresight and grace to at least give these characters, and indeed their entire universe, a second chance. Interweaving the ‘Cats with Green Arrow (WildC.A.T.s ’23 issues 1 and 2) and having Grifter go toe-to-toe with Batman (WildC.A.T.s issue 10 – October 2023) may or may not have worked subjectively, but DC gave the idea room to breath.

The same can’t be said for Marvel. Marvel owns an entire orphanage of superheroes from a bankrupt house once known as Malibu. Unique characters such as Mighty Man – superhero hunk by day and hard-working female nurse by night – could have proven a hit. That’s right, Malibu had a crime-fighting, ‘woke’ transgender character back in the early ’90s, and Marvel refuses to use this and other properties.

Admittedly, they tried to cross over characters from Marvel with Malibu, resulting in a cheap knock-off version of the amalgam universe, in which readers didn’t have cool characters like Dark Claw or Super-Soldier but lame rip-offs like SpiderPrime. Perhaps if Marvel could revisit some of these forward-thinking properties from Malibu that are gathering dust, they could reinvigorate their long-suffering and fatigue-inducing final phases of film and television development.