Over at Warren Ellis' discussion board The Engine he's inviting artists to re-imagine characters whose copyright has expired or at least become too murky to enforce. It's for artists only though; "pen portraits," or written descriptions of the revamped characters, are forbidden. The leaves me out of luck, since I can't even draw flies, but I want to play too. They're currently kicking around Buck Rogers, so here's my take:
As in the classic stories, Rogers succumbs to mysterious fumes in the coal mine he's digging in; he awakes five hundred years later just in time to help Wilma Deering fight off some unsavory types. Also as in the classic stories, Earth is locked in a death struggle with the hordes of Killer Kane (who is now some type of alien or something not so blatantly racist and offensive to Asians; maybe he's a human cult leader), and things are not going well. When Wilma brings Buck back to headquarters, some of the eggheads there want to vivisect him to see if he's carrying any nasty viruses or somesuch that can be used as weapons against Kane's forces who are immune to most of the bugs crawling around 25th century Earth. Deering won't stand by to see that happen to the man who saved her life, so she enlists sympathetic egghead Dr. Huer to help Buck escape.
Buck goes underground, and Dr. Huer, concerned that Buck might actually be a health threat to the people of the 25th century, designs an encounter suit he should wear until Huer can determine that it's safe to do otherwise. Turns out the encounter suit makes Buck invisible to life form scans and radar/sonar/infrared, so Huer builds all kinds of neat gizmos into it so he and Deering can use Buck as a secret weapon/backup/scout on their missions against Killer Kane, all the while keeping his existence a secret from their superiors. Buck's eager to help out against Kane, since he knows a true villain from someone merely desperate, and he's convinced that sooner or later it will be revealed that he's not a biological weapon. High adventure and derring do ensues as Buck, Wilma, and Huer battle Khan and stay one step ahead of the Earth forces who have orders to bring Buck in. Romantic tension builds between Buck and Wilma, but they don't dare act on it just in case he is filled with nasty archaic viruses her immune system can't handle.
I figure the encounter suit storyline has six to twelve issues in it, then Buck is free to lead an entire corps of similarly attired stealth warriors into a final, climactic battle against Killer Kane...