Comics writer David Anthony Kraft and Deathlok creator/artist Rich Buckler pulled their talents to create a character for Atlas Comics in 1975 that only lasted a single issue before he was remade not once but twice during a span of less than five years. Long before Winnie The Pooh was a demon hunter, the Bronze Age saw the dawn of a different one actually called Demon Hunter. Atlas/Seaboard was a publisher that had broken off from Marvel and began their own brand of heroes mostly swiped from their previous boss' works, like The Brute based on Hulk, Grim Ghost from Ghost Rider, and The Scorpion from Spider-Man. Demon Hunter was a one-shot character meant to appeal to the wave of monster comics Marvel was successfully doing in the 70s based on Dracula and Frankenstein. Atlas' editor Larry Leiber(and Stan Lee's younger brother)helped found the company to get back at Marvel for hording all the glory, and he hired Kraft and Buckler to create their own occult superhero to rival Doctor Strange. Demon Hunter is in reality Gideon Cross, a telepathic hitman armed with mystical weapons to prevent something referred to as Xenogenesis which is basically a race of monsters taking over the living world, so Demon Hunter is a little like the original Spawn. He is a Vietnam vet that ended up working for the mafia and became part of a cult named the Harvesters Of Night where he learned how to create illusions to hide his flashy outfit. Gideon is sent on another assignment but comes across a devilish killer sent by the Harvesters because they've turned on him. Demon Hunter discovers that the Harvesters resurrected the evil spirit Asteroth into the body of the very mob boss he was sent to kill, so only then does he realize that his allies were really evil the whole time, thus ending the one-shot with our former hitman deciding to become a good guy and fight his former running crew. The single issue of Demon Hunter came out just as Atlas/Seaboard was folding and was the last original title they published, even though the character was slated to crossover in their other series of Man-Monster that never got to print. Kraft and Buckler got rehired by Marvel and in 1977 remade the character now called Devil-Slayer who was eventually lost in the shuffle of their rotating Defenders team. In 1981, Buckler branched off and came out with his on independent comics anthology titled Galaxia where he remade the character again this time under the moniker of Bloodwing in a short segment where Gideon Cross is now a spiritualist with a similar costume, but we only get to see him visit his psychiatrist with a story cut short as Galaxia only lasted a single issue. Demon Hunter got only one real appearance on his own before his two different doppelgangers with Devil-Slayer becoming a C-list Marvel hero and Bloodwing barely getting his feet wet before being dragged out of the pool because of the rough indies business of the later Bronze Age.
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