Indie Comic Books with Enormous Untapped Potential

Dork Note: Here’s a list of comics with enormous untapped potential—series that, for one reason or another, have never been properly rebooted or re-released. If I ever won the lottery, I’d buy these IPs in a heartbeat.

Elementals is a cult-favorite independent superhero series created and written by Bill Willingham (later known for Fables). It debuted in 1984 from Comico during the black-and-white indie comics boom.

Why It’s Been Dormant: Elementals has long been tied up in creator rights issues & ownership disputes and fragmented IP control.

Atari Force was a science-fiction superhero team series published by DC Comics in the early 1980s, based on characters licensed from Atari. The 1984 series jumped forward in time and followed the children of the original team as they became spacefaring troubleshooters working for the United Planets.

Why It’s Been Dormant: The characters originated as part of a partnership between DC and Atari. With corporate changes at Atari over decades, the rights situation has remained complicated. That makes reprints, reboots, or media adaptations legally messy.

The Lost was a short-lived supernatural horror series published by Chaos! Comics in the mid-1990s, written by Alan Grant (known for Judge Dredd and Batman work). The story followed a group of young people bound together by shared trauma and psychic scars, discovering they had disturbing supernatural connections.

Why It’s Been Dormant: Chaos! Comics collapsed in the early 2000s after financial trouble. Over the years, its library changed hands (eventually tied into companies like Dynamite Entertainment), but not every property was aggressively revived or reprinted.

Faze 1 Fazers is a short‑lived superhero mini‑series published by AC Comics in 1986. The story has a girl called Girl-Bot that can separate her body parts at the joints. Also a guy named, Springer, that can separate his body parts as well, but has springs between them. Despite what it sounds like this series was cool for what it was.

Why It’s Been Dormant: Small print runs and low visibility meant it never built a large fanbase. Without a cult following, publishers often see little incentive to invest in a reboot.

The Next Man (mid-1980s) centered on a genetically enhanced superhuman created through secret experimentation.

Why It’s Been Dormant: Comico’s financial collapse in the early 1990s. Murky rights status after the publisher dissolved. It never received the cult-level attention that titles like Elementals did, which makes it even more obscure today.