YL: Devil-May-Care

The undoubted spokesperson of the Public Domain Superheroes is the ominously-named powerhouse The Black Terror. However, a close second is just as undoubtedly the acrobatic crimefighter, Daredevil.

...no, not that one. This one: pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Daredevil

Versions of the character have appeared EVERYWHERE, in comics, movies, and web series; part of the fun is seeing what names can be created to skirt the trademarking of his original, such as "Reddevil" from FemForce, "Death-Defying 'devil" from Project Superpowers, "Daring Devil" from the "Legacy of the Masque" webseries, and "Doubledare" from the movie "Avenging Force: The Scarab"...my attempt goes by the video game inspired moniker of "Devil-May-Care."

Though I could always use a thesaurus, I guess.

Anyway...as may or may not be apparent, there's one big way (or two modest-sized ones) that my take on the character differs from the rest, and I don't mean the wristbands and collar. In truth, the girl beneath the mask has been in my gallery since the last time I played with the Young Legends concept; she previously went by "Renardine the Fox," based on the Archie/Red Circle hero "The Fox." However, in the few years since I last played around the Public Domain, there have been TWO new versions of that EXACT character, which definitely casts his "Public Domain" status into the same grey area as Captain Marvel's and Plastic Man's, but since I even admitted back then that Renardine's look was a little too much of a swipe on Batman Beyond, I decided to dip back into the PD pool and fish around for something else.

Unlike the nebulousness of my last two "Young Legends," Devil here has a definite backstory as well as being the first of this new batch to embrace the core of the "Vault of Dead Justice" concept: as you (probably don't) recall, the idea was that the bizarre-even-by-PD-standards hero Mister E had been, for several decades, having his shape-shifting imp minions running around and grabbing the various tools and magic artifacts that empowered the forgotten heroes of the past whenever they'd fall or retire and bringing them back to him where he'd store them in a sort of "underground museum" for safekeeping. Through circumstances I'm still developing, a group of teenagers/young adults find the Vault and are recruited/pressganged into taking up the mantles of the dead heroes, but with a twist: to disguise the fact that their powers come from external (read "removable") objects, they take on identities different than the ones that originally used them. In the case of Golden Girl, it's kind of impossible since the powers come with a costume and magical transformation, and in the case of The Shape, since it's a slightly demented artificial being anyway, it follows the others' lead by switching to a female form.

In Devil's case, she is a mafia princess, the spoiled but rebellious daughter of a prominent local crimelord who either serves or is struggling against the real "big bad" of the story. She ends up with the other would-be heroes and decides to join them, receiving the mystical Moonstone amulet of Moon Girl ( pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Moon_Girl ) which "makes her 'superior to any man' and invincible in battle"; since Moon Girl's Wonder Woman-esque powers were always implied to be inherent and natural to her people, however, I decided to translate the Moonstone's power to be that it enhances the wearer's physical and battle prowess, boosting the abilities of a girl who has doubtlessly been trained to protect herself from her father's enemies her whole life to Captain America levels. While she's drawn to the dual-nature/split-down-the-middle appearance of Daredevil's suit, she's the type who can't resist putting her own spin on things, which explains both the tweaks to the costume AND her decision to use a slightly different hero name, conveniently sidestepping the legal issues...

This is both one of my stronger costume design efforts and one of my most monotonous ones; overall, I think it looks great, but it almost feels too simple. I did flip the pic in PSP so I could get away with blacking out her more troublesome hand, though, but that ended up actually strengthening the design overall by making the "devil face" emblem mostly red and the half-grin on her mask black. Serendipitous, wot?