Just trying to understand what you're saying here...
1. Character is flawed
2. Go back to the drawing board, writer
3. Don't apply a commercially successful formula which you've applied many times before, writer, because that doesn't match the character's premise
I think what you mean is, come up with something original which incorporates the essence of the original premise.
Basically.
Kiteman wasn't a failure of a character because he was written wrong. It's because he was written correctly. Writing him wrong for the sake of selling him wouldn't really save his character. It wouls just change it.
I'm not finding a problem though with that proposition of change.
Company has an asset. Asset has some notoriety but essentially sucks. Fix asset to make it not suck thereby make money from what was a flawed asset.
That is what businesses do. Lets step away from comics for a moment. Look at the Bourne trilogy of movies. Faded concept, revitalised. Jason Bourne was a bloody ninja in that movie. I read the book: no ninja moves. Or the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, which was essentially Batman Begins (murdered parents, big mansion, cave, Alfred character, car with tricks, Joker-esque enemy). Bond isn't Batman, in essence, But this seemed the best way of vitalising an asset.
