Major Spoilers Question of the Day: In The Public Domain Edition

Recently, Faithful Spoilerite Vistapapadapoulous asked me a fascinating question: What character would I most like to see in the public domain?  It’s a loaded question, but one that had a couple of immediate answers.  For me, it’s a toss-up between Mickey Mouse (whose adventures have been wide-ranging but still locked in a Disney mold) and Batman (whose editorial team sees no real benefit in anything other than Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, unless as a novelty.)  With the Disney Corporation engulfing and devouring properties that will stay viable for decades, they might stop lobbying to continuously rewrite copyright law in their favor, making this more than a hypothetical query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) asks: What fictional character and/or property do you think would MOST benefit from being in the public domain?