They say "Never judge a book by its cover.", and with good reason: some interesting books have dull covers, dull books have interesting covers, and sometimes the cover may be entirely nonsensical. This can also apply to movies, where minor characters get prominently featured due to their actor getting very popular later on. How this applies to comic books however can be... well, we'll get to it.

Jetman was by day a... well, we don't know his backstory. By night, however, he was Jetman, a flying superhero dressed in red! In his adventures, he'd... well, okay, he didn't have any adventures. Yet he featured in nearly 30 issues of Jetman comics... sort of. You see, Jetman existed on the cover of this series and nowhere else.

You might think it's a bit odd for there to be a cover-only superhero since surely a comic would want to show off its own marketable heroes like... well, I don't know what heroes feature in these comics, which is part of the problem here. Apparently though it was surprisingly common for comics to be sold with heroes that only ever exist on the cover, never getting to be a part of the contents. Why, there's the Human Fly, Liberty Man, Green Light, Liberty Boy, Stellar Man, Miss Liberty, and how can we forget the villainous Skeleton Key (who dresses like the Blue Beetle and holds a key with a skull on it evilly)?

The most fortunate part of this, I suppose, is that there's no lore to be contradicted here. These cover-only characters can be made into whatever you want (which, granted, you could do that with public domain superheroes anyway, but still).

Dracula Daily has started again up so, to keep with the festive spirit, I searched high and low for someone vampire related and... well, this guy will have to do.

No, he's not the guy from the KFC logo, he's Professor Armand Broussard, professional werewolf hunter... well, he doesn't really encounter werewolves that often. Sure, he's had a couple, but really he just hunts all sorts of supernatural critters. Well... he doesn't bring any weapons, and he tries to so this non-lethally, so arguably he's also not a hunter (though hunting can also just mean seeking out, so that one's just pedantic).

Armand was at one point assisted by Danny O'Shea, but he mysteriously disappeared at one point without a word. Unlike his assistant, Armand had a surprisingly long run, with 33 issues total.

This one's going to be a bit of a different one this week since this character is probably known to you (Hell, the modern incarnation of them is getting a movie made about them), but you probably don't know that, due to how American Copyright law functioned between the 20s and 70s, this character is public domain. So, today let's talk about just how this happened.

[Disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer]

Now, most of you may be familiar with the current way things become public domain in America, mainly waiting a really long time for the property to enter it automatically. For The Great Gatsby, it took 96 years since publication for it to be free to use for anyone and everyone.

Most public domain superheroes became public domain in less time than that. In fact, they became public domain almost immediately because the relevant creators/companies did not file a copyright notice within 5 days of publication. This is the case of the Blue Beetle - specifically the original Dan Garret incarnation (it can also be spelt "Dan Garrett", but most people exploiting the public domain aspect of the character use the former spelling). The character was published and nobody filed that notice.

"But wait," I hear you cry, "didn't Charlton Comics get the rights to the character, and then DC got the rights from Charlton Comics?" - sort of. Again, the character is legally public domain, but they did purchase them anyway - more importantly, they also got the trademark for Blue Beetle, and that's an aspect you can't get around (also technically the Ted Kord incarnation of Blue Beetle is also public domain since their creators also didn't file a copyright notice, but do you really want to mess with that?).

Now, obviously their use by DC would be seen as a major risk for people wanting to utilise the character... but the reason I'm talking about this is that people have used the character anyway and have seemingly made it out unscathed. Project Superpowers (a modern reboot of a bunch of public domain superheroes) doesn't actually use him, but they were still bold enough to include him in a bios section in the back, under the name "Big Blue". Lucky Comics (a group that has also done licensed non-BBC Doctor Who Universe stuff, so they're pretty familiar with legal skullduggery) has a series called "Beetle Girl" about Dan Garret's granddaughter, Danni, who takes up her father's job as crimefighter. Most impressively, we also have a live-action movie called "Agent Beetle" about a modernised version of Dan Garret (but not so modern that they're the Jaime Reyes incarnation, which is undeniably copyrighted).

Basically, the Blue Beetle is a surprisingly safe pick... just be sure to call him something else (technically you don't need to call him something different within the comic/story - Beetle Girl uses "Blue Beetle" just fine within its pages, just not on the cover - you just can't use Blue Beetle in a way that infringes with DC's trademarks). Also make sure to not use anything added by a modern incarnation - Dan Garret was basically just a roided up cop in chainmail and didn't have any powers outside of that.

No, I didn't forget about it, you forgot about it.

Anyway, this week's hero is from a slightly older era than the typical hero covered here - all the way back from 1921 (making him public domain by more traditional means). He's also not from a comic and doesn't have a public-domain illustration, hence the watermarked stock image.

Richard Staegal was just your average wealthy socialite until, one day, he made a pact with his fiance to live a more exciting life. Most couples would accomplish this by [think of lewd joke later], but Richard opted to take on a new life as a Robin Hood-type figure, stealing from the rich and giving to charity.

Of course, he couldn't just go out on the streets without a disguise, hence why the Man in Purple is clad in purple clothing and a purple hood - all of which are apparently specially made to dissolve in acid (that sounds like all clothing, but maybe they dissolve quickly or dissolve under weaker acid than most clothing).

Despite being a creation of Johnston McCulley (perhaps best known for creating Zorro) barely anyone cares about this guy apparently. He showed up in 3 stories total (all of which I could only find by trudging through Archive.org - though there is one publisher selling an anthology with all of them) and, for the first time ever, I've had to create the pdsh wiki page for them. So, one could argue I actually wrote this post 4 days ago and therefore I'm actually early rather than late!